


Thy touch upon the palm

by dwellingondreams



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Multi, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:21:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 110
Words: 47,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27509008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dwellingondreams/pseuds/dwellingondreams
Summary: Stand alone prompts from vhsmeme's "touch prompts" writing prompt list, involving both romantic and platonic pairings, ranging from 200 to 800 words on average.
Relationships: Alys Karstark/Sigorn, Alys Rivers/Aemond Targaryen, Arianne Martell/Domeric Bolton, Arianne Martell/Edmure Tully, Arianne Martell/Viserys Targaryen, Barba Bolton/Aegon III Targaryen, Catelyn Stark/Ned Stark, Catelyn Tully Stark/Barbrey Dustin, Cersei Lannister/Catelyn Tully Stark, Cersei Lannister/Lyanna Stark, Cersei Lannister/Ned Stark, Harrold Hardyng/Sansa Stark, Howland Reed/Benjen Stark, Jaime Lannister/Benjen Stark, Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth, Jenny of Oldstones/Duncan Targaryen, Jeyne Poole/Sansa Stark, Jon Arryn/Lysa Tully Arryn, Jon Snow/Daenerys Targaryen, Lysa Tully Arryn/Barbrey Dustin, Lysa Tully Arryn/Malora Hightower, Lysa Tully Arryn/Petyr Baelish, Lysa Tully Arryn/Stannis Baratheon, Lysa Tully Arryn/Willas Tyrell, Merope Gaunt/Tom Riddle Sr., Minisa Whent/Brynden Tully, Nettles "Netty"/Daemon Targaryen, Rhea Royce/Daemon Targaryen, Rickard Stark/Rhaella Targaryen, Roslin Frey/Edmure Tully, Sansa Stark/Aegon VI Targaryen, Sansa Stark/Mya Stone, Sharra Arryn/Visenya Targaryen (Sister of Aegon I), Stannis Baratheon/Davos Seaworth, Tywin Lannister/Hoster Tully
Comments: 32
Kudos: 114





	1. Relief (Ned/Catelyn)

#2 - Ned/Cat

He has a kind smile, she tells herself, at the altar. 

Tentative, but kind. 

His face had been a frozen mask the entire procession up, as Catelyn approached, straight-backed and chin held high, on her father’s proud arm- Lysa on the other, somewhat less straight-backed, smilingly waveringly and eyes still red-rimmed from her morning full of tears- but once Catelyn had come to stand beside him, Brandon’s shy brother had chanced a small smile. 

She still thinks his grey eyes cold- they are paler than Brandon’s were, icier- but at least his smile is kind. 

They join hands, and she is proud that hers are not shaking or clammy. She will come to know him when the war is over. For now she must do her duty, and he his. 

His hands are not shaking either. 

Catelyn usually prides herself on paying attention to their septon’s sermons, but she cannot look away from his face, long and lean, his freshly shaven jaw. 

He is not handsome the way Brandon was, he does not make her squirm and blush at the thought of being in his arms, but she thinks he has an honest look about him. 

And when he kisses her, he is very gentle, and his lips are warm, not insistent or prying, as if he were trying to swallow her whole. 

When they break apart, hands joined before the applauding crowds, Catelyn feels a wave of relief, and even dares to squeeze his long fingers, ever so gently. He glances at her and inclines his head with a stiff but sweeter smile.


	2. On a bruise (Rickard/Rhaella)

#14 - Rickard/Rhaella

Rhaella finds him soaking in the hot springs, which is unsurprising given that he spent the morning in the training yard, sparring with Benjen until both were red in the face and breathless, greying father and lanky son. 

Rickard is in far better form than many lords his age, but she knows it cannot be as easy for him at forty five as it was at twenty five, strong as he is. And Benjen is in his prime, closer to a man himself than a skinny little boy. 

He sees her coming and ducks underwater, resurfacing with his hair plastered to his scalp. Rhaella comes around to sit on a rock jutting out into the springs, coated with slippery moss, slipping off her soft leather boots first, and drawing her legs up under her. 

He swims over to her, then, ignoring her gasp, hauls himself out of the water to sit beside her on the rock, soaking wet. Her skirts are already dampened, but she does not mind as much as she ought to. 

Some part of her likes seeing him like this, though both of them are far past the age to be acting like playful young lovers. 

She just likes seeing him how he must have been as a boy, albeit with far less lines on his face and scars on his body. Rhaella eyes a purpling fresh bruise across his sternum, and probes at it gently with her fingers. 

“You should put a compress on that when you’re done with your bath.”

He catches her hand in his, and they share a quiet look. “It could be our bath,” he says, mildly.

Rhaella casts a dubious look at her plain grey gown, then sighs and turns her back to him so he can unlace her bodice. 

He does so, seeming a bit startled she actually agreed, though he cannot see her small, secretive smile from behind her.


	3. Worry (Ned & Rickon)

#20 - Ned & Rickon

Jon learned to walk early, Robb was slow, less enthused to let go of Catelyn’s hands. 

Sansa seemed to only trip and fall a few times, and then trotted around as if she’d been practicing in the womb. 

Arya fell about once every few moments, it seemed, but only sprung back up like a weed, undeterred despite her mother’s worry over her scabbed and bruised hands and knees. 

Bran didn’t so much learn to walk as learn to climb, regularly escaping the nursery until they gave up before he was even three.

And Rickon, well, Rickon never walks at all. One day, he just begins to run. 

Ned watches his little legs pump as he barrels across open clearing in the center of the godswood, his tiny face set in a look of intent focus, nose scrunched up. 

He starts to chuckle at the sight; watching Rickon run like this reminds him of Benjen, racing Lyanna when they were only a little older, near this very same spot- then stops chuckling abruptly when Rickon disappears from view into the long grass, having seemingly tripped over his own feet. 

When he doesn’t pop back up, Ned strides over, worried he may have hit his head or gotten his foot caught and twisted in a hole. 

He finds him and scoops him up immediately, checking him for injuries with one hand- only for Rickon to mash handfuls of torn up grass, wildflowers, and dirt into his face. 

Ned coughs, chokes, then splutters at his youngest, who grins impishly, wriggling in his grasp, before flipping a squealing Rickon upside down, then right side up, and tossing him into the air to catch him as he shrieks with joy.


	4. After a nightmare (Harrion/Donella)

#16 - Harrion/Donella

He wakes gasping and soaked in sweat, hair matted to his temple. 

He dreamed of Harrenhal, of his cell, of the grey unchanging sky through the small window, endless, unchanging days in isolation aside from a daily walk on the ramparts under armed guard. He was never out of his cell for more than an hour a day, if that. Then it was back to four damp walls and a plain cot, a bucket in the corner and a tray of food twice a day. 

He should not even think back on it. He was not beaten save for when he foolishly put up a fight while they were bringing him into the keep, he was not starved, he was never tortured. He was alone. A more disciplined man would have been content with that. 

He was alone. 

They told him his brothers were dead and he was alone. And he wept like a child on that cot. 

His eyes sting. He forces himself to inhale and exhale. It is the middle of the night. He is not at Harrenhal, he is at Winterfell. Laying beside his wife. 

His wife, who was also a prisoner. Harry does not like to think about that. He is reasonably certain she was never harmed- well, that she was never harmed physically, save for when the Brotherhood attacked Riverrun during Daven Lannister’s wedding, but- he will never be completely sure. 

She said once that after the Freys brought her to Riverrun, she was placed into Marbrand’s custody. The man they meant to marry her to. 

She said he was gallant. She did not say it in a fond way. 

“Harry.” He starts, heart pounding in his chest. He did not even realize she’d awoken.

She puts a hand on his arm. “Go back to sleep. It was just a dream.” How long has she been awake? Did she hear him crying in his sleep, like a child? 

He is supposed to protect her, and she is the one comforting him, like a little boy. 

He rolls over, turning away from her so she cannot see the shame in his eyes. 

To his surprise, she puts her arm tentatively around his chest, and tucks her head against his shoulder. 

He blinks back tears, and closes his eyes again.


	5. On a bruise (Brandon & Berena)

#14 - Brandon & Berena

She’s five years old, playing a game of hide and seek with her siblings and a few others in the godswood when she loses her balance scampering down a slope, trips and falls, and lands on her hands and knees, badly bruising her palms. 

Berena sits there for a few moments, shocked and out of breath, and then when Brandon comes into view, smirking because he’s caught her, bursts into tears, glad for an audience. 

His smirks turns to a grimace, and he jogs over, ducking under a low-hanging branch. “What happened, Beri?”

“My hands,” she says in a tearful whine, showing them to him like a surrendering soldier. “They hurt!” 

He sighs, annoyed to have to postpone his fun to tend to her, but crouches down and helps brush out the gravel and dirt stuck to her hands, then helps her fix her braid, which is coming loose, before tugging her to her feet. 

“Can you walk?” he asks, with a world weary older brother’s resigned tone.

Berena considers, then shakes her head. “N-no…” although her feet are perfectly fine.

“Alright.” He lets her clamber onto his back, then stands up, wincing as she locks her skinny twiggy arms around his neck. “Don’t choke me! Let’s go.”

Berena hides her smile in his dark hair as he races off into the grove of pines, her clinging to his back, in pursuit of Lyanna and Ned.


	6. Comfort (Donella/Robb)

#9 - Robb/Nell

He does not cry in front of her about Bran and Rickon until five days after Lysara’s birth, when, while holding her, he suddenly starts to crumple. 

Nell says nothing, only comes over and wraps her arms around his middle, supporting Lysara against his chest with one hand as they sit together on the edge of the bed. 

For a few moments there is no sound but his heaving sobs and her steady breathing, before he says, hoarsely, “I held Rickon when he was born. Just like this. She- They look so similar. When they’re just babes. He had… he had the same face. And hair.”

“We’ll name a son for him, and for Bran,” Nell promises him, voice muffled by his shirt. “We will, Robb. We’ll have sons. Eddard and Brandon and Rickon. And girls, too. We can name them for your sisters.”

He murmurs something, then starts to cry again, apologizing all the while to her. “I shouldn’t be- I’m sorry. Nell. I’m sorry, it’s not-,”

“Don’t,” she says, raising her head to look up at him, tears in her own eyes. “Don’t you dare apologize to me for grieving for them. They were- they were my brothers, too, through you. I never… I never thought to have little brothers.”

“I know,” he coughs, as if his tongue were too thick in his mouth, then rasps, “Bran… really liked you.”

“I liked him too,” Nell says, and feels herself start to crumble as well.


	7. Comfort (Sansa & Arya)

#9 - Sansa & Arya

Sansa wakes to a pair of freezing cold feet pressed up against hers, then murmurs in dismay when she rolls over to see Arya curled up next to her in bed. 

Sansa wouldn’t mind sharing- she likes sharing with Jeyne, when they can stay awake half the night whispering and giggling and telling each other stories, but Arya’s feet are cold, her limbs are bony, and she always falls asleep first then mumbles to herself half the night. 

And kicks. And elbows. 

Sansa thinks seven is plenty old enough for Arya to sleep in her own bed, not come creeping into Sansa’s because she was cold. 

She riles herself up with indignation, ready to shake her rude little sister awake and send her packing, but then a shaft of moonlight illuminates her sister’s face, and she hesitates. 

In sleep, Arya looks peaceful, almost serene, smiling a little to herself, softly, not her usual toothy grin. She sleeps with her hands rooted in her shift, little fists. 

Despite herself, Sansa feels a reluctant flood of fondness. Arya’s feet are cold and she talks to herself and kicks in her sleep, but there’s a strange sort of pride to being the big sister. 

Arya could have snuck into Robb or Bran’s bed- or Jon’s- but she chose Sansa’s. That must mean something. 

Sansa sighs, then lays back down beside Arya, resolving to let her stay for now. 

But if she kicks one more time, they are really going to have words in the morning. 

Honestly.


	8. Protect (Donella/Harrion)

#8 - Nell/Harrion

“Stay behind me,” Harry says, unsheathing his sword. He glances back at her again, then amends, “keep your hand on my back, so I know you’re there.” 

The wind is howling, and Nell can barely see straight, hail and snow is whipping against her skin. Lysara is clutching her around the neck, barely visible through the furs she’s bundled in. 

“Why don’t I just hold your shoulder?”

“Because it’ll be too hard to move,” he says through gritted teeth. “Don’t look down. If you see something coming, yell.”

Nell nods jerkily, keeping one arm locked around Lysara, ignoring the aching of her muscles, and shuffles after him through the knee-deep snow, one foot after another, her gloved hand splayed against his back. 

They stop and start, stop and start again. 

Nell isn’t sure if he’s still speaking to her, because all she can hear is her blood pounding in her ears, and the moans of the wind. 

Trees lash together in the distance, and when she squints at the first dark shape approaching, she shouts, and then, when he doesn’t seem to hear, shoves him from behind. 

Harry turns, maneuvers them around so he is between her and Lysara and the wight, and stays there, waiting for it to get close enough to strike at it. 

After a few confused moments, she realizes he is concerned that if he strays too far from her and Lysara, they’ll be attacked by more while he’s struggling with just one. 

She removes her hand from his back, which is trembling, but he snaps back at her, “Keep it there!” so she does, eyes tearing from the wind, Lysara wailing against her chest.


	9. Comfort (Rickard/Rhaella)

#9 - Rhaella/Rickard

The first he kisses one of the scars on her shoulders she flinches so violently he almost wonders if he’s hurt her or repulsed her in some way, if her first husband ever kissed her there, and made a cruelty out of what should have been a kindness. 

But then she glances back over her shoulder at him, the look in her eyes not dismayed or disturbed but almost curious, as if she’d never been kissed anywhere but on the lips before. 

Rickard blinks back at her, surprised by her surprise, and then again when she turns back round, straightening her spine as if he were attending to her hair, like one of her maids. They’re all devoted to her. 

He’s not sure if it’s because they still see her as a queen, their queen, or if it’s simply because she is a very affable mistress. 

“Do you want me to do it again?” he asks in a low, bemused tone.

Her only response is a quiet exhale, but she rolls her shoulders back in response, brushing some silver gold locks of hair away from her face. 

“Yes,” she says, sound almost ashamed to say it, as if it were some terrible, filthy thing to want, for her husband to kiss one of those pinkish white raised lines. 

He brushes his thumb over it, then kisses it again, slower, this time, and her hand finds his knees, and squeezes in response.


	10. Protect (Sandor/Mira)

#8 - Mira/Sandor

She’s fixing some twine on the trellis vines when Sam and Jace go darting past, laughing over some shared jape, and knock against her small ladder. 

Mira yelps in alarm as she loses her balance, resisting the urge to grab at the trellis- she’s afraid she’ll bring the whole thing down with her, and it’s not so far to fall- 

There’s a long, filthy stream of curses as she collides with something solid, and Mira finds herself half-sprawled on the ground, skirts tangled, only supported by Sandor, who looks incensed from the quick glimpse she gets of the smooth side of his face. 

“Sorry,” she says, swiftly, extricating herself from his grip, though it only took him one hand, if that, to hold her up. “I wasn’t paying attention, oh, don’t-,”

“Shit for brains, both of you,” he’s snarling at Sam, who looks mortified, while Jace is staring at the ground, close to tears. “Running around like chickens without their bloody heads- she could have broke her neck, is that what you want? I should take a horsewhip and drive you through the fucking yard with it-,”

“For the love of the Seven,” Mira says sharply, tugging on his elbow, “they’ve had enough. They’re very sorry-,”

“We are,” Sam says, quickly, while Jace adds, “Very sorry, Mistress, we didn’t mean harm by it, we were only-,”

“Alright,” Sandor sounds slightly chastened by the way she’s digging her nails into his elbow. “Get gone with you. Ask Holt if he needs help sweeping out the stable.” 

They dash off, looking very much relieved. 

“You don’t have to shout,” Mira says, folding her arms across her chest, and looking over the trellis. At least she got that twine tied up. 

“Next time you’re on a ladder,” he says, “call someone to come hold it.”

“They have work to do,” she snorts. “I’ll just call you.”

He stares at her for a moment before he realizes she’s made a jape, then glances away, exhaling to hide the fact that he wants to laugh. 

She can tell because even the scarred and fleshy side of his mouth is twitching.


	11. To say goodbye (Robb & Lysara)

#25 - Lysara & Robb

“Sara,” he says, “please don’t sulk.”

His daughter is firmly ignoring him, a small hunched figure in the corner of her bedchamber, staring obstinately out the window. 

She stands so like Nell when she’s angry, he’s never sure whether to be amused or struck by the resemblance. Nell always says she’s glad Lysara has his look, not hers, but Robb thinks she is every bit her mother’s daughter in other ways. 

Including her temper.

“I am not sulking,” she says, crisply, then straightens her shoulders and glances back at him, brows drawn and lips pursed together. 

Now she looks like Sansa whenever she was in a fit of temper. 

“I think you are,” he says, struggling to hide his smile. “Are you angry you can’t come with me? We’ve talked about this. It’s just three weeks. Would you really want to leave your mother here alone, without us?”

“It’s just three weeks,” she retorts, reddening in outrage. “Why can’t I go? I’d be good! I wouldn’t even complain if you made me ride a pony, and not my courser!”

She really is horrifically spoiled, he can admit that, sometimes. He doesn’t know many other seven year old girls with their own courser, but it seems to have been a Ryswell tradition. Bloody horse lords. 

Robb can’t help it; he grins. “And you should be very happy to ride him into the wolfswood with Mother while I’m gone, alright? I’ll be back before you know it. Sara, come here.”

She scowls, but obediently comes over, tilting her chin up for her kiss on the head. 

“I don’t like it when you go,” she says. “Mother gets all snappish with everyone after a while.”

“Now who does that remind me of?” He says with mock wonder, brushing her auburn curls back from her face.

Lysara exhales in shock, then sticks her tongue out at him, jerking away when he tries to tickle her, before being caught and shrieking with laughter as he scoops her up in his arms, rubbing his beard on her face despite her protests.


	12. Love (Jon/Daenerys)

#1 - Jon/Dany

“Daenerys. Wake up.”

Dany wakes with a rapid inhale of frigid air, blinking back the tear that seem to be freezing in her eyes from the cold. 

She struggles up, letting Jon pull her to her feet. He looks slightly dazed, exhausted, but unwounded. “What-,”

“You fell,” he says. “Not far. Drogon’s close.”

She can hear him now, an undulating roar, pulsating through the shimmering mists around them. “I fell?” She doesn’t hurt much, just a little sore. 

“The snow- it must have cushioned you,” he wraps an arm around her, tugging her along with him. “You’re alright.” 

He’s saying it like a statement, but his eyes are questioning, intent and almost frightened. You have to be alright, he’s saying.

A shadow swoops over them. Rhaegal, screaming for his rider. Drogon answers him from afar. 

“I’m alright,” she agrees, wrapping her arm around his waist, and raising her gaze to meet his. 

He nods shakily, and presses his forehead briefly to hers. He feels flushed, burning under the skin, despite the savage cold. 

Daenerys drinks in the warmth for a moment, then pulls away, striding ahead, calling out to Drogon. 

When she glances back, he is staring at her as though transfixed, before Rhaegal lands in a great shower of mist and snow, wings flapping like leather sails.


	13. Because you are dying (Tom/Amy)

#18 - Tom/Amy

“Amy,” he says, in relief, when he realizes she’s still here, sitting hunched over beside the door. 

She didn’t run. That has to mean something. She stayed, when she could have gone again. 

He slows his stride as he approaches her, massaging some of the pain out of his shoulder. She can heal it for him later. It doesn’t matter. 

“Come on. We have to go, quickly now.” 

But she does not take his hand. He crouches down beside her in annoyance, prepared to haul her up if he has to, then sees the blood coating the front of her torn and stained blouse.

He stills. “Amy.”

She glances at him, gaze dull and dazed. Her lips move, barely, but he can’t hear what she’s saying over the sudden ringing in his ears. 

He moves her hands out of the way, ignoring the too-warm, too-slick feeling of her drying blood on his hands, to examine the wound. 

He didn’t even- he never saw- 

“Where’s your wand,” he says, fumbling around until his fingers clench around it. 

He presses it into her limp hands. Her fingers won’t close. 

“Amy. Look at me. Focus,” he snaps. “You have to heal yourself. You can do it. I know you can. Just-,”

She smiles at him, faintly, and he can’t tell if it one of mockery, of pity, or worse, of gentle bemusement, and closes her eyes. 

“Amy,” he says again, voice shaking. “Don’t- look at me!” 

He shakes her, lightly. She does not stir. 

“Amy, don’t-,” 

He feels for her pulse in her wrist. He can’t find one. 

“No,” he says, loudly, clearly. “No. Wake up. Come on. You’re not- we’re not- wake up. Amy!” 

He traces her chin with bloody fingers; she sags against him like a ragdoll, her hair falling over her eyes. 

He tries to swallow and finds he can’t. He can’t even speak, as if his throat had sealed itself shut, though he wants to scream, to rage, to force her to open her eyes again. 

But he can only hold onto her. That is all he is permitted to do.


	14. On a scar (Tyrion & Jhiqui)

#12 - Tyrion/Jhiqui

“Very impressive,” she says, in response to his scarred face, and then proceeds to show him hers. 

Tyrion had not thought that the former daughter of a khal turned slave would have so many, but Jhiqui is seemingly eager to display them, clenching a fist so the copper skin of her arm tightens, revealing muscles from years of labor, and countless old scars from scrapes, cuts, and burns. 

The one she is most proud of slashes up her side, a faded streak disappearing into her ribs. 

“This,” she says, and grabs his hand, to his surprise, so he can trace it with his fingers, not in the least bit flirtatious but intent on proving her point, “is from when they killed my father. My mother, too. She was a…,” she seems to be searching for the right word in the Common Tongue, then settles on, “a madwoman. No Dosh Khaleen for her. Yeah? She wanted to be with him. She took one of his knives and fed it to a bloodrider.” 

Jhiqui touches her own throat, then smiles. 

“And you were mad enough to fight, too?” Tyrion asks dryly.

“Ah, no,” Jhiqui says. “I did not use a knife. I kicked embers in a boy’s face. He was stealing our things, ripping open our trunks. So he slashed me up the side. The pain was great, I thought I would die. That pleased me. But I lived.” 

She removes his hand, tugging down her woven tunic, and adjusting her painted vest. “I could not understand why. Now I know.”

“Why?” he asks, curious. “You think it was your destiny to serve your khaleesi?”

“Valar dohaeris,” she says, in shockingly good High Valyrian. “All men must serve. It is not destiny. It is duty. But I have seen khalasars rise and fall. I crossed the Dothraki sea. I sit among the halls of the Red God in Volantis. I have seen men born slaves and die kings. I have seen magic come back into the world. Things my mother could only dream. So not, it is not my destiny to serve. It is my destiny to know. And I will die happy and run to my family in the tall grasses, knowing all I do. I have so much to tell them when we meet again.”


	15. Because you are dying (Tywin & Elia)

#19 - Tywin/Elia

Elia had thought the man dead already when he is deposited on the floor of the throne room, wrapped in Lannister scarlet, but a moan says otherwise. 

This is not what she wanted, as it is easier to reason with a corpse and then an unfinished one, and she is very, very tired after a long day of treason, murder, and couping, but Ned Stark is giving her a little look which says his honor cannot stand them idly standing by while a man dies in front of them, so she reluctantly calls for a maester, then lets Lord Stark help her down from the throne. 

Slowly, she approaches, then, with Lord Stark’s help, kneels down on a Targaryen cloak spread across the marble floor, besides the man who thought to crack her city in half and roll around in the blood. 

“My lord,” she says, touching his shoulder gently, with only mild revulsion. 

Mortality is aging him, rapidly, his face wrinkled and pale, eyes bloodshot and red-rimmed. The smell from his wounds is most foul, but she has smelled fouler. 

Aerys, for example. “If you have any last words, Septon Gerold will hear them now.” 

She waves over one of her favorites. She will have an awful lot of favorites here, when all is said and done, when the court has been properly purged and they are swearing themselves to her son’s future rule, under the watchful gaze of his regents, of course. 

Ned Stark has only agreed to commit to the one year, but Jon Arryn will be happy enough to spend much longer, she suspects. 

Perhaps Hoster Tully will throw his hat in, too. Or Stannis. Poor thing. He’ll be very busy, what with that and Storm’s End. 

Lord Lannister’s last word is a name. His son’s. Not the adorable little one, the overeager big one, Ser Jaime, who died protecting her from the Mountain. 

He should not have attacked Clegane and Lorch from behind. Had they seen his approach, they would have thrown down their swords and surrendered, not because they could not defeat him together, but out of terror of his father. 

Unfortunately, Clegane had broken his neck two blows later, and only then realized his mistake. 

Lorch ran like a craven. Clegane seemed to waver. And then took a quarrel to the face when Ned Stark burst in with her uncle and twenty men. 

What a sight! 

Now Lewyn guards the nursery, and Stark her, and she means to have Clegane’s head boiled down to the bone and dipped in gold.


	16. Protect (Jorah & Penny)

#8 - Penny/Jorah

Penny mostly just calls him the Bear in her head, as he is big and hairy and snarly, and has stayed well out of his way, whether they were chained together or in the same cage or not. 

But there are no chains nor cages now, just the clamor of battle, and she is sitting on a little box near the tent, waiting and watching, ready to run at a moment’s notice, despite her heavy, mismatched armor. 

She was never much good in a real fight, only a mummer’s one, but she is very fast and very small, and she thinks she stands a good chance of evading swords and spears so long as she keeps moving until she finds someplace more secure to hide. 

She told Tyrion this was a terrible idea. Yezzan was better than this. They may have been slaves but at least they were safe enough. 

At least there was laughter, not screams and shouts. 

She sees the Bear emerge from the dark, and tenses, unsure if she should call to him or not, then sees another bloodied shape appear behind him, axe raised, and screams. 

He whirls, kills the enemy soldier, then backs up towards her as two more run to him- to her. 

Penny scrambles off the box, knife in hand- all she has to do is slash at their unprotected legs, she thinks, and then run while they are stumbling- but the Bear kills one, and then as the other approaches Penny, whose grip on her knife suddenly seems less secure, the Bear grabs her bodily by the arm, yanking her up off her kicking feet and behind him, and kills the second. 

For a few moments they wait for more of the enemy to arrive, and then he glances down at her. 

His half-helm does not cover the brand on his cheek. Demon, the slavers said. 

“Thank you,” Penny says hoarsely, peering up at him. “You saved me.” 

He looks down at her, and she waits for a sneer of contempt, but it does not come. 

He turns away, sword still in hand, and tells her to hide inside the tent while he stands guard. 

She hastens to obey.


	17. Promise (Arthur & Eddara)

#4 - Arthur/Eddara

Someone gently shakes her awake past midnight. 

Edda sits up in bed, knows it is one of the Kingsguard from the soft creak of his armor. Steels herself. 

Rhaegar has left well enough alone since it was confirmed that she was with child, but by now she knows that any fantasies of refusing his will, whatever it is, are just that, fantasies. 

Woodenly, she shoves back the covers and clambers out of bed, trying to ignore the bracing chill of the Red Mountains snaking through her half open, narrow tower window. 

It is Ser Arthur, she realizes, after a moment. 

Once this would have mortified her, shamed her beyond belief, but now she just jams her feet into her slippers and keeps her head lowered. 

“I am ready to see the prince,” she murmurs blearily. 

“Lady Eddara, look at me,” he says, tone different from the usual… she should not call it guilt, in fact, it almost infuriates her to think of it as guilt, for she was taught as a child that righteous guilt should compel a man to act, but-

Edda glances up at him, and is unnerved by the look in his violet eyes. “We are not going to see the prince,” he says, voice barely above a whisper. “We are leaving.”

She does not dare to believe it. “Where am I to be taken, Ser?”

He pauses, then says, “I- Rhaegar does not know.”

Eddara stares up at him. 

The moonlight brings out the pale glow in the streak of silver blonde through his dark curls. 

“You…” This is a dream. 

She is dreaming, as she used to dream of Brandon breaking down the tower door and killing all in his way, as she would dream of Lyanna climbing through her window with a sly smile, gesturing for her to hurry up. Of Father leading a host through the mountains, warhorns echoing. 

“Please, come with me,” he says, and firmly but gently grasps her by the arm. “Quietly now. You have my word you will come to no harm. But we must leave now.”

Rhaegar said much the same thing, when he and his men came down from the hills near Harrenhal, and she realized quite quickly they were not there for a passing conversation about the weather or the conditions on the road. 

But now she goes far more willing than she did then, afraid she will break the spell if she says a word, shock him back into his senses, and that he will be overcome with that useless guilt again, and convey her right back to that hateful bed where Rhaegar means for her to bear the child he swears is the princess he has seen in his dreams.


	18. To say good morning (Aemma/Maegor)

#7 - Aemma/Maegor

What she is quickly discovering is that she is far more of a morning person than her new husband is. 

When Aemma tries to nudge him awake, he groans and rolls over onto his stomach, muffling his face in his pillow, she must resort to sprawling across his back like a turtle shell, her sharp chin resting on the back of his neck. 

“You’re crushing me,” Maegor mumbles, although give the discrepancy in their sizes, she very much doubts that is true.

“Time to wake up,” Aemma says, with no shortage of glee. His hair smells good. "We made plans to break our fast with the Darklyns.”

“We can unmake them.”

“Do you really want to give Robbie more reason to tease us?” she inquires, then prods at his cheek. “Wake up.”

In response, he props himself up in bed, shaking her off, and then bending down to kiss her when she squeals in protest after having landed back on the mattress. 

That, at least seems, to properly shake him out of the lingering vestiges of sleep.


	19. Comfort (Arianne & Myrcella)

#9 - Myrcella & Arianne

“Well,” Arianne cannot help but ruefully say, when she lays eyes upon Myrcella Baratheon, now a novitiate of what is known to be the wealthiest motherhouse in Dorne, for its sprawling estate along the Torrentine, “I cannot help but feel we match, Princess.”

Princess, because that is what some circles still refer to Myrcella as, for all that many decry her an abomination, a grotesque, once by birth, second by the scars left to ravage her face through Arianne’s foolishness and Gerold Dayne’s cruelty. 

But she is not the only one with scars now. 

Arianne once prayed for beauty, and in many ways judges she still has it, but she did not escape King’s Landing unmarred, four years ago, and the puckered and slightly wrinkled skin along her arms, neck, and a patch of her left cheek reveal that to be so.

Myrcella has retained her good humor, it seems, and embraces Arianne like a sister, the crystals hanging from her rainbow woven belt tinkling gently together, her hair smelling of lemons and oranges. 

When she draws back, there are tears in her green eyes- so like her mother’s, Arianne thinks, remembering Cersei’s rage and fury and grief- but then she blinks and they are gone, and she is looping her arm with Arianne’s, even as she draws the golden veil they say she so often wears back across her face.


	20. Happiness (Catelyn/Cersei)

#3 - Cersei/Catelyn

“I should like to tell you something,” Cersei says in that lofty tone of hers, kicking her bare feet back and forth over the edge of the bed. 

From her position curled up beside her, Catelyn frowns. She’s always so smug when she’s like this. 

Cersei makes no immediate moves to reveal whatever she knows, instead turning her head so that her green eyes look deep into Catelyn’s blue, mesmerizing as the green summer grass roiling in the wind on the hills. “Do you want to hear it?” she breathes, rosy lips barely parted.

Catelyn loses all patience and says, plainly, “If you will not come out and say it, I will leave your bed at once.”

Cersei frowns, pouting like the girl of sixteen she is, then throws an arm over Catelyn’s waist as if to pin her there, not that there is much difference in size between them, both tall and slim and long-limbed. “It’s about Lord Connington.”

“What about him?” Jon Connington is gallant and polite enough, Catelyn supposes, though not much taller than her, and that carrot red hair- though she should not talk, being auburn herself, but-

“I’ve made,” Cersei says, with no small amount of pride, “all the proper arrangements. He will arrive in two days time, and while your father is here he will absolutely propose-,”

Catelyn sits up outraged. “And are you my father, to arrange such a thing for me? What makes you think I want to wed Jon Connington?” she demands, glaring at Cersei.

“Because if you do, you will spend near all your time at court,” Cersei smirks. “Rhaegar means to name him Hand. Your father will not dream of denying the match when he hears that, surely. My father was Hand. And now I will wed the King. Your husband will be Hand-,” she catches a lock of Catelyn’s fiery hair between two long fingers, “and our children will wed, and be kings and queens. Is that not splendid?” Praise me, her eyes are saying, greedy.

Catelyn glares a moment longer, then softens. It is not a bad idea. She could not bare the thought of them being parted when she was wed, had preferred not to think of it at all. 

But now- well, she dares to hope of something more than duty. “Splendid,” she repeats Cersei, dryly, but catches her fingers and kisses them. “Just splendid.”


	21. Love (Sansa/Harrold)

#1 - Sansa/Harrold

“Jon,” she says, without looking up from the red-faced babe in her arms. 

He has a big nose he must have got from his father, but she thinks those are Arya’s ears; she and Arya have always shared the same ears, if not much else. 

“We’ll call him Jon, for my brother and your great-uncle. My father’s foster father.” Snow and Arryn. 

She smiles down at her son’s face for a moment longer, noting his shock of white blonde baby-hair, which she assumes will darken to Harry’s sandy blonde over time, then looks up at her husband. 

“Harrold,” she says, after a moment, “Are you crying?”

He holds out his arms without response, and she carefully places their son in them, then strokes his heaving shoulder with one hand, almost bemused by his response. 

“Jon,” Harry says, brushing a thumb over the babe’s nose and tiny mouth. “That’s a good name.”

“I know,” Sansa says, yawning. Wincing, she leans forward and kisses him briefly on his scarred cheek. “We can name our next for Lady Anya, if you like. Or my sister.”

“Arya Arryn?” he glances up at her, grinning despite the tears in his eyes. “She’ll hate that.”

“I know,” Sansa says, “That’s why I have to tease her about it in my next letter. So she’ll come visit all the quicker.” 

She is looking forward to seeing Arya’s face when she hands her her nephew, Jon. She might even cry, then snap at Sansa for laughing at her, until they are both crying together, and kissing the babe’s little hands and feet. 

Arya likes babes; she is always toting Uncle Edmure’s little girl about on her hip or back when they visit Riverrun. 

But for now Sansa just keeps stroking Harry’s shoulder, watching him watch their son, contentedly exhausted.


	22. Promise (Sansa & Arya)

#4 - Sansa & Arya

Arya refuses to open her eyes until Sansa finally declares she is done with her hair; it’s the only way to keep them from bickering through the entire process. 

When she does, she’s startled; she thought she’d look unrecognizable, some strange creature, an unknown lady, faceless and voiceless, beautiful, of course, but not… well, not her. 

But the young woman staring back at her in the looking glass is her, and the tiny blue and yellow flowers woven into the braided strands of her brown hair bring out the grey of her eyes and the color in her high cheeks.

“You look beautiful,” Sansa says, with no small amount of pride, squeezing Arya’s shoulders. “The most beautiful bride I’ve ever seen.”

“Were you blind on your own wedding day, then?” Arya snorts.

Sansa wrinkles her long nose at her, then leans down and kisses her on the head. “I promise.” 

Arya stands somewhat awkwardly, smoothing down her skirts, embellished with silver stitching along the hem and winding up around her waist like vines, and then links arms with Sansa, who at last, now that they are twenty five and twenty three, is only four or so inches taller than her, as opposed to half a foot or more. 

Sansa adjusts her Stark maiden cloak, and while Arya wishes more than anything that Father and Mother could be here, just for this one day, there is something to be said for walking down the aisle at her sister’s side, not be given away, exactly, like a treasured jewel, but choosing it herself, just as she’s chosen her future, and her sister.


	23. After a nightmare (Donella, Sansa, & Arya)

#16 - Nell, Sansa, Arya

In any other family it might be unusual for three people in the same bed to have three separate nightmares on the same night, but Nell cannot think of another family with as much cause for bad dreams. 

She wakes, heart pounding, to hear Sansa softly weeping into her pillow on one side of her, while on the other Arya is clearly awake as well, given the stiffness of her posture and the sound of her harsh breathing. 

It might be almost comical, out of context. 

Nell closes her eyes again for a moment, then says, quietly, “Bad dreams?”

Sansa sniffs, wiping at her eyes, while Arya rolls over to face Nell, and after a moment, takes her hand in her own, squeezing as if to reassure herself that Nell is there. 

Nell squeezes back, then takes Sansa’s hand with her other. The three of them, sisters by blood and marriage and suffering, she thinks. 

She never thought to have much in common at all with Robb’s quarrelsome, spoilt sisters. She wonders what he’d say to see them all abed together. 

Sansa leans a little closer, her soft curls spilling over Nell’s shoulder. Arya hums tunelessly under her breath, then trails off as she begins to calm.

Nell stares at the bed curtains until she feels them beginning to doze and drift on either side of her, while sleep scrabbles at her vision.


	24. On a falling tear (Sansa & Jeyne)

#13 - Sansa/Jeyne

When Sansa finally returns to bed after the tourney, she finds that Jeyne has taken up residence in hers, half-asleep but still tearful over Ser Hugh’s death. 

Sansa is exhausted and still a little frightened over her walk back with the Hound, and does not think she has any patience left at all for Jeyne acting like such a child, but they’ve always comforted one another when they cried, and she can’t quite bring herself to ignore her very best friend in the world, either. 

After quickly undressing and changing into her shift- which is still far too hot but she can only imagine Septa Mordane’s reaction if she found out Sansa wanted to sleep in the nude- she clambers into bed beside the sniffling Jeyne. 

“He died bravely,” Sansa whispers, trying to console her. “I’m sure he’ll be honored by his family. Besides, at- at least it was quick, Jeyne. He did not suffer much.” 

She feels very mature, thinking of it that way. At least his death was not drawn out or prolonged. Surely it is best to die quickly, if one has to die. He likely never even realized what had happened until it was too late. That makes her own eyes sting a little. 

To distract herself, she brushes away some of Jeyne’s hot tears with her fingers, coaxing a shaky giggle out of her friend.

“That tickles.”

Sansa smiles, pokes Jeyne fondly in the rib, then blows out the candle.


	25. To say goodbye (Ned & Lyanna)

#25 - Ned & Lyanna

Ned isn’t shocked that Lyanna is in a foul mood as they say their goodbyes at the Crossroads. He’s off back into the Eyrie with Robert and Elbert, and she and Brandon and Ben are headed back up to Riverrun for a brief visit to the Tullys, then back home until the weddings next year. 

Plural. Both Lyanna and Brandon will be wed by this time next year. 

The thought is very strange to Ned. It will never be the same again. And he wishes this were on better terms- everyone has been out of sorts since the end of the tourney, and not just because the excitement and allure of it is over. But he doesn’t want to dwell on what happened. 

With any luck, it will be quickly forgotten whenever the next scandalous bit of gossip comes along.

“Cheer up,” he says, gently, chucking her under the chin. “You’ll have plenty of time to run yourself ragged back home before we come south again.”

“I wish you were coming with us,” Lyanna mutters. “Brandon’s being insufferable. I can barely take a piss alone.”

“What a way for a lady to speak,” he says, although he’s unable to hide the chuckle in his voice. “He’s just being protective, Lya. Give it another week or two, and he’ll be back to leaving you and Ben alone while he’s off riding with Kyle and Jeffory.”

“More like off whoring,” she says, with a sly edge, then kisses Ned on the cheek. “Alright. Mind yourself.”

“And mind Robert?” he teases.

“I’ve given up all hope of that,” Lyanna sniffs, tossing her braid over her shoulder. “Be safe, Ned.” 

Now she sounds a little like Mother. Ned hugs her one more time, and pats her on the back. “You as well, Lyanna. Don’t do anything rash.”

She laughs, and it is her laughter he remembers, long after that cool, rainy morning has faded into distant memory.


	26. Comfort (Jon/Lysa)

#9 - Lysa/Jon Arryn

He touches her arm to comfort her in the wake of her second miscarriage in the year and a half they have been reunited, since the end of the war, but she jerks away violently, turning away from him so all he can see is her dark auburn hair, spilling across her tearstained pillowcase. 

Jon does not know what to do, though he should. Rowena had several miscarriages during their time together, but that was different, they were cousins, he’d known her in one way or another all his life, and they were close in age- she just two years younger than he. 

It is still difficult for him to see Lysa as much more than a child, even when he tries- he knows he owes her respect and consideration, as his wife, if nothing else, but there has never been love between them. 

She thinks him old and ugly, he knows it, and as pretty and sweet as she can be, he cannot bring himself to completely aside the vestiges of resentment and aggravation, when he thinks of whoever soiled her. Some impulsive young household knight, he assumes. 

‘A man of no consequence,’ her father said. ‘I promise you will hear no more of him, my lord.’

“I’d like to be alone,” Lysa says, thickly, her voice muffled by her tears. She sniffles aloud. “Please.”

Sorry and angry with himself and frustrated with her, despite knowing he should not be, it is not her fault- Jon stands up from the bed, sparing her one last sober look, and goes.


	27. After a tough day (Berena/Jaime)

#15 - Berena/Jaime

Berena is in no mood by the time she makes it back to her rooms, Jaime at her side. 

She quite likes tourneys, usually. She likes them somewhat less when Robert has an ever-changing parade of women on his lap or arm, and even less when she is left to wrangle three rambunctious children. 

That is perhaps her playing the victim a tad, as she could have easily left Steffon with Renly and Edd and Lyanna under the watchful gaze of their septa. 

But she likes her children, yes, gods forbid, she does, most days, and she would rather they remember her as someone other than an occasional visitor to the nursery. As they no doubt will remember Robert.

Now she’s not being fair. He does love them, he is only… there are other things that take up his attention, and he is trying with Steffon, but… 

She pauses outside her door, taking a moment to collect herself, and feels even guiltier when she snaps, “Don’t look at me like that,” at Lannister, who adopts a mildly affronted look before averting his green eyes elsewhere. 

Berena inhales, exhales, then says, in a much milder tone, “Thank you for escorting me to my rooms, Ser. I am sorry to have pulled you away from the festivities.”

“Don’t be,” he says dryly. “One can only stomach so many toasts before it becomes a bit nauseating.” 

He put up a good fight on the circuit but ultimately lost to Ser Barristan, who crowned Berena queen of love and beauty, as the highest ranking woman in attendance. As was right and proper. 

She has been crowned queen of love and beauty thrice by now. It has lost all effect on her. It no longer makes her think of Lyanna- her sister, not her daughter, it gets so confusing, most days- and want to weep or rage, it just makes her weary. 

“Well,” she says, “I think you rode beautifully today. For whatever it is worth.”

He seems surprised by her genuine compliment, and his hand brushes against hers as he opens her bedchamber door for her. 

Berena squeezes it quickly, almost furtively, and then avoids his gaze as she steps inside, cheeks hot.

It was only to thank him, she tells herself. It can not have been an easy day for him either. She owes him that much, at least. 

He does not follow, and the door closes quietly between them.


	28. Encouragement (Donella/Harrion)

#11 - Harrion/Donella

“I really don’t think,” he says, with a dry edge, “that you can hide away in here forever while your daughter gets married.”

Nell throws a positively venomous look his way, adjusts the ornate comb in her hair one last time, then stalks over to him. “I am not,” she says, with great emphasis, “hiding. Harrion.”

He winces; he knows he’s in for it now. “I thought I might cheer you.”

“I don’t need cheering,” Nell says under her breath, even as she takes his offered arm. “I need to get this over with.”

“Really,” says Harry, also under his breath, as they step out into the corridor, “one would think we were attending a mass execution, the dour mood around here.”

“We are,” Nell retorts, though she does not say it as coldly as she could, and there is a hint of pride in her voice. “The execution of childhood.”

“Lysara should love to hear you say that. You have such a way with words, Donella.”

“Now you’re just being insolent and rude,” Nell tells him. In apology, he kisses her on the cheek. 

“I’m sorry. I know you cannot help but worry for her.”

“I am not worried for her,” Nell says stiffly, though she squeezes his hand as they reach the bottom of the stairwell. “She is twenty one years old, this has certainly been delayed long enough. I am only- I will miss her. Very much.”

“She’s staying right here,” Harry says in bemusement, but she can tell he knows what she means by the look in his eyes, a little solemn as well. It will not be the same. 

Lysara may be a woman grown, but a wife is something else. It means someone else has a claim to her. That she will not be underfoot and at their sides, the way she has for all these years. That she will soon have other commitments, all her own, not just the ones bestowed on her from birth. 

Then Nell sees her waiting for them, veil rustling as she turns to beam in their direction, and forgets all about her grief and temper, because she is the most beautiful creature Nell has ever seen.


	29. To say hello (Sandor/Mira)

#24 - Mira/Sandor

She hears him ride in when she is working in the gardens, kneeling on a woven mat in an attempt to spare her knees, hat askew on her head. 

Once the din of the dogs and Stranger’s irritated bellows have died down, she listens for his footfall, which is not difficult to do- he is very quick, much swifter than his size might indicate, but he can’t hide the heaviness of his footfall anymore than an aurochs could. 

She does not want to have to get up and then stiffly kneel back down again, so she stays where she is, weeding, until he is close enough that she can smell horse and sweat on him, his shadow at least offering some temporary shade.

“Do not step,” Mira warns, squinting up at him from under the brim of her straw hat, “on anything.”

He gives her a disgruntled look, and then she realizes for a fond moment that he is put out because she did not come to greet him when he rode in, as she usually does, if only to tell him sometimes that something needs to be fixed or that someone is giving her trouble or that he really needs to write back to Ser Such-and-Such or Lord So-and-So. 

“Hello,” she says, with a smile, and pats his knee, the only part of him she can reach from her position.

He crouches down next to her. “What are you doing?”

“Weeding,” she shows him. “You can help. Don’t bother if you mean to go in and bathe, you’ll just be sweating again if you come back out to garden.”

“I can wait until we’re done,” he says, reaching impatiently for the nearest greenery, then blinks when she grabs his wrist. 

“That,” Mira says, “is a carrot. Pull this instead,” she shows him, then clucks her tongue approvingly when he does so. “Root and stem. That’s the way to do it.”

He glances at her out of the corner of his eye, shakes his head a little, pushing his lank hair out of his eyes- one of these days he will have to let her cut it, really, it’s getting ridiculous- and goes back to work.


	30. After a tough day (Catelyn & Elia)

#15 - Elia/Catelyn

The princess is exhausted when she returns from her dinner; Catelyn sets down her needlework immediately as Elia is all but carried into the room by her uncle Lewyn, protesting that she can walk, there is no need. 

“Our princess overdid it,” Lewyn tells Catelyn, reproachfully. “Again. She is to go straight to her bed and rest for the rest of the evening.”

“I am not a child, Ser,” Elia snaps, as Catelyn follows them into her bedchamber. “Uncle. Really. There is no need-,”

“There is every need,” Lewyn sets her down on the bed. “You were close to fainting by the last course. You should have excused yourself after the third.”

“You are exaggerating,” Elia says. “I could not shame Rhaegar like that. I am his wife. I will not be seen as some frail, fainting flower who cannot so much as withstand a simple dinner with friends-,”

“Sycophants,” Lewyn mutters under his breath, then excuses himself at his niece’s dirty look. 

Catelyn stays where she is, hands clasped in front of her. The princess does look exhausted, and seems slightly out of breath, chest heaving, despite being carried in. 

She runs her hands through her dark hair, then smiles forcefully at Catelyn. “I am sorry you must bear witness to my uncle’s continued babying of me, my lady.”

“Not at all, Princess,” Catelyn says. She thinks Elia one of the most beautiful women she has ever known, even like this, her gown rumpled and the shadows under her eyes prominent against her olive skin. “He only cares for your health. As do we all, I’m sure.”

“Of course,” Elia waves her off, then yawns. “I think-,”

“I could call for a bath,” Catelyn suggests.

“No, I’ll bathe in the morning, I- the book from atop my wardrobe, perhaps.” Elia puts a hand to her head. “I wanted to look in on Rhaenys, but she was already asleep, her nurse said. Tomorrow, perhaps.” She smiles again, slightly stilted, as Catelyn hands her the book. “Thank you. I suppose I have been poor company as of late, but I am just… always very tired with these babes.” 

She pauses, as if realizing what she just said.

Catelyn feels her eyes widen. “You- Princess, you are with child?”

“Elia is fine, my lady,” Elia says, “when we are alone, I…” she trails off, looking troubled, then smiles again. “Yes. The gods have been very good to us. Maester Pycelle confirmed it a week past. The prince and I are expecting our second.” She puts a hand tentatively to her belly, then draws it away to flip through her book. “Four moons along, he estimates.”

Catelyn sits down on the edge of the bed, concerned, though she does not dare voice it aloud. The princess Rhaenys is just a year old, and Elia was bedbound for six months after her birth. It seems… it just seems rather soon. 

Her mother always said a year between one babe being born and falling pregnant with another was the minimum a woman should try to maintain. Unless Maester Pycelle is mistaken, this means just eight months had passed betwixt the Princess Rhaenys’ birth and the conception of this babe. 

Unbidden, she reaches out and takes Elia’s hand. “I will pray that everything goes as smoothly as possible,” she says, earnestly. 

“You are very kind, Catelyn,” Elia’s eyes crinkle when she smiles, as if her whole face were smiling with her. “But I am sure there is no cause for concern. I’m stronger than I seem.” She squeezes Catelyn’s hand, and turns back to her book, losing herself in the pages after a moment, some of the worry lines around her mouth easing.


	31. On a scar (Jon & Arya)

#12 - Arya & Jon

“They don’t look that bad,” Arya says, helpfully, or in what she hopes is a helpful way, peering over Jon’s shoulder into the looking glass. 

Even seated he is lanky enough that the top of his head comes up to her chin, and she rests her chin on his hair for a moment, grinning when he pulls a face at her in their reflection.

Patting him on the shoulder, she reaches around and gently pokes one line of talon-marks on one cheek, then the other. They’ve faded some, but it still looks like he was ambushed by a murder of crows. 

And in a way, she thinks, some of her humor fading, he was. 

“Are you going to cut it or not?” Jon asks with a gruff edge; he’s so sensitive about his hair, even more than Sansa is about hers! 

Arya rolls her eyes, adjusts the old cloak draped over his front so he doesn’t look like he was wrestling with Shaggydog after this, and clicks the scissors in hand together in a mock threatening matter.

“It’s not a good idea to be rude to your barber,” she informs him.

“You and a razor close to my throat?” he snorts. “I love you, little sister, but I’ll pass on that one.”

“Oh, very funny,” Arya says, though she snickers a little as she begins to trim. “Stop turning your head! Do you want a fringe like a rug?”

He stills, apparently considering how awful that might look. Arya hums a little under her breath as she works. “Do you want to see your ears or not?”

“What’s wrong with my ears?” he asks, defensively, eliciting another bark of laughter from her.


	32. After a tough day (Lysa/Barbrey)

#15 - Lysa/Barbrey

Barbrey is not sure why she is doing this to herself; she should have never accepted the offer to visit Winterfell in the first place, but she did, out of a sense of vindictive spite and morbid curiosity. 

She wanted to see them falter and fail. She wanted to prove before her own eyes that Ned Stark was not even half the man his brother was, that no matter his triumphs in battle, he was just an upjumped second son who wouldn’t know what to do with himself without his father or brother or Robert bloody Baratheon telling him where to go and what to say. 

And she wanted to prove to herself that the woman who took what should have been hers, the title of Lady Stark and a seat at the table, was just an insipid, tremulous, thin-skinned southron flower who had no right to the Stark name, no right to Winterfell, and certainly no right to the happy marriage that should have been Barbrey’s.

But she was wrong. She may loathe Ned Stark for the rest of his days, but one would have to be willfully blind to think that he does not have the respect of his household, and the North as a whole. 

He is… not a poor lord, she will admit, begrudgingly. He is, however, by her estimation rather a poor husband, and as much as she wanted to hate his silly little Tully wife, with every day Barbrey feels some of her carefully constructed icy front cracking. 

She tells herself that Lysa reminds her of Bethany, passionate in her emotions, with a dreamy sort of look to her when she thinks no one is watching. 

But that is not true. What she- well, it would be one thing if she’d caught a nasty case of sisterly attachment to the Lady Stark. That is not it at all.

What Barbrey does feel, is, well-

Lysa Tully Stark is crying to herself on the other side of the door. 

Barbrey knocks once, then again when there is no answer, tossing a venomous look at the guard who moves to send her away. 

The door flies open, and Lysa stands there, several inches shorter than Barbrey, blotchy-faced, blue eyes rimmed in red, barely able to contain her sniffles. “Lady Barbrey,” she says, hoarsely, “I’m afraid I’m not well-,”

“Yes, that’s why I’m here.” Barbrey wastes no time in striding into the room, taking Lysa firmly by the arm. She feels as light and delicate as a bird. 

“Make yourself useful and ask the kitchen for some hearty food to be sent up to your lady,” she snaps as the startled guard. “Really. Can’t you see she must be famished?” 

She slams the door shut in his face, then turns to Lysa, who is starting to cry all over again, even as she apologizes. 

Barbrey resists the urge to brush her coppery ringlets away from her face, and instead leads Lysa over to the bed. “Why don’t you sit down and dry your eyes. You’ll feel better after you’ve had something to eat. You should be gaining weight, not losing it. What is he feeding you? Breadcrusts and water?”

“Lord Stark is very good to me-,” she’s weeping all over again.

Barbrey would not describe setting up your bastard son in the nursery before your wife’s arrival, then treating her with alternating fumbling chivalry and frosty distance anything close to ‘very good’, but as she cannot chase Ned Stark around the keep with a riding crop in hand, she’ll have to settle for stealing his wife out from under him, as he stole Winterfell out from under her and Brandon.


	33. To say hello (Tywin/Hoster)

#24 - Tywin/Hoster

Tywin was supposed to go to court as a page, then a squire, then be knighted by the king or the prince, then serve as Hand. That is the way his life is supposed to, the way he decided it was going to go at the age of nine or ten, when he decided that as kinslaying was a sin, he would need something to tide him over until he can take up his proper place as Lord Lannister. 

Instead, because of Father’s idiocy and open-handedness, he’s been shuffled off to Riverrun, a ramshackle waterlogged little spectacle of a keep. The Tullys were never even kings in their own right. Even bloody Highgarden would have been better than this. 

“Tywin!” Hoster Tully bounds over to him, interrupting him from his reverie, and clapping him enthusiastically on the shoulder, his hand lingering for a warm moment as he waits for his brother Brynden to catch up to them, shouting for them to stop leaving him behind. 

Hoster is two years older than Tywin, eighteen to his sixteen, and yet a head shorter, though he can already grow a full beard, whereas Tywin is disappointed by the same lackluster stubble every week, and he refuses to try to grow it out until he can be certain he won’t look a fool. 

By all accounts, Hoster should irritate him on every level, loud, boisterous braggart that he is, and Tywin should instead be closer with Brynden, just a year younger than him. 

But Brynden is a sullen, skinny boy of fifteen, who reminds him in many ways of Tygett, while Hoster- well, Hoster doesn’t remind Tywin of any of his brothers. 

“Come on,” Hoster is saying now, impatiently. “I promised Ty Blackwood a race to the fords, and you’re my second. A Ty for a Ty,” he grins.

It’s the stupidest jape Tywin has ever heard, but he finds himself smiling back at Hoster very much against his will. “I thought seconds were only for duels, Tully.”

“A duel of the waters,” Hoster snarks, then squeezes Tywin’s shoulder again. “Come on. I’ve half a mind to outfit you with a crossbow so you can take out their sails.”

“I’d aim for the hull,” Tywin mutters, following him towards the water gate, still trying to hide his slight smile.


	34. On a scar (Sansa/Jeyne)

#12 - Sansa/Jeyne

Jeyne does not like Sansa to look at her back when they are together. She has scars on other parts of her body, too, but her back is the worst of it, and she knows Sansa feels a surge of fury and guilt whenever she sees it, so she does her level best to keep it out of view, even when they are lying in bed. 

But she had not realized the depth of the scarring on Sansa’s own back until today, seeing it clearly in the light of day for the first time. 

Jeyne was whipped. Flogged, really, first at Littlefinger’s brothel, then at Winterfell. She knows what scars from a whip look like, has examined her own skin many times, tracing the white roots and spiderweb lace of them, the pain layered atop of pain.

Sansa’s scars do not look like she was whipped, it looks like someone took an iron rod or the flat of their blade and laid into her back and legs, repeatedly, like the scars you might have from a brutal belting, but much worse, because at least a leather strap might hurt slightly less than heavy metal. 

Jeyne has to cram her fingers- also scarred- in her mouth to keep from crying out in horror. 

Sansa glances back at her, and though there are tears in her eyes, her mouth is a firm, thin line.

“I,” she says, slowly, “am tired of being ashamed of it. It was not-,” she pauses, as if to catch her breath, then continues quietly. “It was not my fault. I was a child. We were both just children. No one- any man who would… who would do things like what was done to us, to a child, whether he was ordered to or not, should die.” 

She stops talking there, but the look in her watery blue eyes adds, ‘screaming’, though that is not a very Stark way look of looking at things. 

Jeyne is not a Stark. She is just a Poole. She was never bound by their honor or protected by their name, even when she was Arya. 

She has never been a warrior, will never pick up sword and shield like the Mormont women who have been so kind to her. 

But for the first time she feels that if given a blunted knife, she would gladly and willingly hack to death any man who would treat Sansa so ill, and she understands for the first time why Sansa held her while they chopped off Petyr Baelish’s head, and refused to look away, even as he screamed and begged.


	35. Happiness (Sandor/Mira)

#3 - Mira/Sandor

“I have to tell you something,” Mira says, with that intent look on her face she gets whenever she is busy chewing on the inside of her cheek between words. 

She chews on it so much, whenever she is worried, that Sandor thinks if you could turn her skin inside out, the inside of her cheek would be as badly scarred the outside of his own. He doesn’t like to much think of that, though, so instead he debates what might be so worrisome that she feels she has to come to him in the middle of the day, instead of waiting until dinner or later. 

It’s not that he minds, but she is usually so busy with the keep or the village that he does not see all that much of her until sundown. 

He likes that best, anyways, because the sun brings out brown highlights in her black hair and darkens her skin from almond to bronze, so much that it seems to glow in the light. She is the brightest, warmest thing he has ever known. 

She steps into the solar, closing the door all the way behind her, and leans against it for a moment, before coming over to him. 

“Do you know how I was sick, last week?” she says, looking up at him. 

He has only gotten taller through the years, while she is the same height at eighteen as she was at fourteen. He doesn’t like it and all the comparisons to his brother that it draws, but Mira does not seem to mind. 

He frowns. “Are you sick again?” He brushes his hand across her forehead, causing her to blink and exhale in amusement; she doesn’t feel feverish, just warm from being outside all day.

Mira catches his large hand between her two smaller ones, and tucks it against her sternum. He can hear the steady thud of her heartbeat. 

“No,” she says. “But I am with child.” When he is slow to react she adds, definitively, “Andon says I’m near five moons. Isn’t that something?” 

She pauses, still waiting for a response, then says, “A baby. At least one of us knows a bit about them. Thank god Rhea’s had so many, hm?”

Caught between terror and wonder and shock, he does the only thing he can think to do, which is to all but crush her against his chest until her muffled complaints force him to release her.


	36. Anger (Jon & Gilly)

#21 - Jon & Gilly

“Lord Snow?” Jon looks up from his letter, watching Gilly step into the room, eyes wide in the dim lighting. 

He’d not thought she’d dare seek him out since her and Sam’s return to Winterfell, and he feels a flash of guilt seeing her without any babe in her arms at all, though that is ridiculous. Both Aemon and Monster are safe enough, for now, and his focus needs be on making sure they, and everyone else in this castle under siege by the dead, stay that way. 

Gilly shuffles forward, arms locked around her middle. She looks to have put on a little weight, is less of a stick of a girl, and her hair looks healthier, not lanky and greasy and held back in a scraggly braid, but despite her proper attire, he finds it hard to think of her as anything other than that desperate, terrified girl he first met at Craster’s. 

“Is there something you wanted of me?” he asks, slowly. He knows he frightened her badly the last they spoke, but he had no choice, he reminds himself. He did what was best for everyone. 

Perhaps she has come to realize it now. He stands, coming out from behind the desk, thinking that might make him a little less intimidating, but she still rocks back a step and a half, wary.

“I was only wondering,” Gilly says, softly, “if you were still a Lord. Since… since the Wall’s gone, and all.” She turns big brown eyes up at him, and Jon smiles grimly.

“I’m no lord, Gilly. In truth, I never was-,”

The force of her slap turns his head to the side. He had no thought a girl so small and skinny could hit so hard. It was more a clout than anything else, hard enough to blur his vision. 

He turns back to her, shocked, to find her standing before him, hands balled into shaking fists at her sides, trembling like a leaf but refusing to cower despite the fury in his eyes.

“That,” she says, “is for taking my boy from me. I don’t care what you do to me. I’d have done it even if’n you were still a lord. You wouldn’t have done it to no lady, would you?”

Jon stares.

“Would you? Would you have taken him from me if I was one of your pretty northern ladies? Like the Karstark girl? Or even Val? The one you all call Princess, with her long yellow hair and her blue eyes?” she demands, shrilly, then gives a grim little smile of her own when he does not immediately respond. 

Shaking her head, she turns from him, and walks to the door, though it is obvious she’s expecting him to shout, to command her to stop, to have her punished for striking him.

Jon just holds his cheek breathless, then says, “I saved your son’s life.”

“If you want my thanks,” Gilly says, hard and cold, without turning back to face him, “why don’t you get on a bloody dragon and save it again, and then I’ll thank you proper, my lord Snow, I swear it.”

The door slams shut behind her.


	37. Because I am dying (Cersei & Jaime)

#19 - Cersei/Jaime

Her vision has been reduced to throbbing black spots, like leeches eating away at the canvas of the world around her, when by chance in the midst of their struggle Cersei’s flailing hand closes around heavy metal pitcher that held water until it was toppled to the floor. 

With the last of her strength, unable to breathe or speak or even think straight, she smashes it into the side of his head as hard as possible. 

Jaime’s crushing grip on her throat slackens, and it is just enough for her to scramble away, gasping and coughing. 

She knows he will be on her again in an instant, she’s not strong or swift enough to evade him forever, but when she glances back she sees he’s collapsed, bleeding profusely from the blow to the head she just gave him. She hadn’t realized she could hit so hard. 

Cersei stays where she is for a moment, trying to wet her mouth and lips with her tongue, breathing harshly, then crawls over to him. 

There’s blood in her hair from where he ripped it from her scalp, and a purpling bruise from the vicious blow he gave her to the face before he wrapped his hands- hand- around her throat. She’s covered in more scrapes and bruises from their struggle. 

But now she heaves his head into her lap, cursing herself for weeping- he does not deserve her tears, how could he do this, how could he, he lied, he said he would always love her and then he made to kill her, he lied- and holds him much as she held their son as he bleeds to death, his green-eyed gaze flickering erratically all over her swollen and bloodied face. 

Cersei traces the line of his cheekbone with her fingers; she could be staring down at herself, another version of her own face, dying, sliding into the rictus of death, and when she is sure he is no longer breathing, presses a bruising kiss to his slackened forehead, shivering violently as she does so. 

Outside, the wind is howling, and snow is flurrying against the windows, and beyond that, the wintry sky glows green. 

After another few moments, Cersei struggles to her feet, still coughing and wincing with every painful step. 

She wants to watch. She wants to watch, because there is nothing left for her to do.


	38. Sadness (Donella & Bran)

#23 - Nell & Bran

On the first true day of spring, they ride out into the wolfswood, just the two of them and a small contingent of guards. 

Bran sits straight and confident in the saddle, guiding his horse with ease using just the reins, and when Nell sees him out of the corner of her eye, every so often for an instant it could be a glimpse of Robb. 

At fifteen Bran is both taller in the saddle than Robb was, but thinner in the face, and his hair a shade darker and straighter. 

Yet he sounds so much like Robb did when she first met him, his voice creaking and changing with adolescence, and they have nearly the exact same eyes, down to the shape and positioning of the lashes. 

“I used to dream about that day,” Bran tells her. “When we came out here with Theon. And you were leading my pony across the creek.”

Nell glances at the creek, now burbling and fresh with the foaming waters of spring. She can hear birdsong overhead, and a squirrel darts through the brush. 

“That was a little foolish of me.” She cannot help but remember what happened shortly thereafter. 

“Maybe,” says Bran, “but all I could think was that you didn’t seem to pity me. Like Robb. You tried to make me feel like nothing had changed.”

Nell smiles sadly at him. 

“It did,” Bran says, stroking his mare’s black mane. “But… that was one of the happiest days I ever had, after I fell.” He exhales, then says, “Until I came home again.”

“Well,” Nell says, reaching over and squeezing his shoulder. “That was one of my happiest days, too. And I know it would have been one of his, if he could have seen you in Winterfell again.”

Up ahead, Grey Wind and Summer have raced off in pursuit of a rabbit. A crow is hopping from tree to tree, watching them. 

Bran spares another shared smile with Nell, then presses onward with a flick of the reins.


	39. Sadness (Donella/Harrion)

#23 - Nell/Harrion

The crypts at the Karhold are not deep under the castle itself, as at Winterfell, but in a blustery cave facing the sea, carved out of the stone over hundreds, if not thousands, of years. 

When the sun rises in the east, it illuminates the cave first, and when the heavy oaken door is propped open, floods the space with the glowing light of the dawn. 

There are no statues, but there are small spaces in the stone and earthen walls, filled with remembrances to the dead. 

Nell stands beside Harry as he stares at his brothers, right beside one another. Both hollows at the foot of their tombs are filled with moldering flowers, pinecones, seashells, amber beads and pretty stones and pebbles. 

Nell watches as Harry puts two small figurine in with them, one for each other brother, a crude likeness of two tiny wooden soldiers, both wrapped in black and white kerchiefs that Nell herself stitched. His face is blank and smooth until he has let go of them, and then it slowly crumbles. 

Nell holds onto him, laying her head against his chest, while he tries and fails to hold back one sob, then another. 

Outside, all one can hear is the crashing of the waves against the shore, far, far below, and the distant scream of gulls riding the last winds of winter, for spring is fast approaching, as if carried on this unusually warm sunlight they find themselves bathed in.

When Harry looks up again, his face is wet and shiny with tearstains. 

Nell strokes some away with her gloved thumb, then says, quietly, “I think they would be very pleased to know you came to see them. And relieved to see you healthy and whole.”

He nods, jerkily, and then leads her away from the tombs and towards the doorway filled with bright light.


	40. Because you are dying (Jaime/Brienne)

#18 - Brienne/Jaime

By the time Brienne is through there’s only one of them left, the others either dead on the ground or having fled when Stoneheart fell, and that’s the Bull, the boy they call Gendry. 

“Go,” she says, and it is not a question or a plea but a warning. 

She can see the rage and fear intermingled in his bright blue eyes, and for an instant it reminds her of Renly on one of those darker nights, when he realized Stannis was far from dead in the water, and then he lowers his axe and goes, brush crunching underfoot. 

Brienne waits to make sure it was no ruse, shoulders and chest heaving, then calls out to Pod, “Are you alright?” 

Podrick is bent over in the icy stream, washing the blood off his face with water. As quiet as ever, he gives a single nod in response, and says something about Ser Jaime. 

Ser Jaime. 

Brienne whirls, runs, and winds up on her knees beside Jaime Lannister, who has one arm locked across his belly to keep his guts in, studying the pale wintry blue sky with a strange mix of emotions. 

“Jaime,” Brienne says, hands hovering over his chest, as though she could somehow heal him like the Elder Brother on the Quiet Isle might. “Ser- Jaime. Jaime, look at me.” 

He has to know. He has to know she never wanted this. She did not want him hurt. She only could not let them murder Podrick. Had she been alone, she would have given her life for him. 

But she could not let another innocent die for the sake of this, for- for some notion of revenge that will never end, never, only go on and on and on, a stone tumbling down the mountainside, precipitating an avalanche.

His gaze blearily focuses on her. She expects a sneer or scowl or whispered rage, but all she gets from him is, “Beauty.” 

He swallows hard, and reaches out his stump, his golden hand lost, to her face. It knocks against her chin. 

Brienne feels hot tears running down her bloodied cheeks, then bends her head over him, so her blonde hair tickles his face. 

She can feel his breath and hers intermingle. He whispers something else, and dies with a quiet sigh.


	41. To say hello (Sylva & Jaqen)

#24 - Sylva/Jaqen

Sylva supposes that if she had to be banished anywhere to wed some decrepit old man as punishment for her ‘treason’- the treason of what, she is not sure, doing a favor for a man? 

Doran Martell is a coward and if Prince Oberyn yet lived there would already be blood flowing down the Red Mountains, and if she were Lady of Santagar her banners would be the first to join him. 

But she is not, she is only heir, and now whatever child Leyton Hightower deigns to sire on her will follow her. 

But when her father does die, she intends to leave for home immediately, and woe be to any man who thinks he might keep her from her birthright.

Still, it is not so bad. She might have been sent to Estermont instead, but Father could not pass up the opportunity for a connection to the Hightowers. 

And she supposes she should be grateful that Lord Leyton is more consumed by his strange, half-mad spinster daughter’s spellbooks than in consummating their marriage. 

With any luck he will pass in his sleep and she will return home with an entirely new mourning wardrobe, all purchased with Hightower coin. 

And while women are ordinarily not permitted inside the Citadel, she is now a Hightower by marriage if nothing else, and as the Citadel only exists in such fine form by Hightower pleasure, none dare question Sylva’s comings and goings, nor her sudden acquaintance with a novice named Alleras.

Sylva has always thought herself bold as brass, but Sarella- well, Alleras, he puts her to shame. Still, it is worth it to have something to do during the day. 

Sylva is chatting with Alleras outside one of the lecture halls when he calls to a passing novice, waving him over- “Pate, come say hello to my fair lady!” 

Sylva giggles, exchanging a brief bemused glance with Alleras as the boy jogs over, looking between the two of them. Then stops. 

She cannot- she does not know what it is, but looking at this common, pale, pudgy boy with lank brown hair, she has the sudden feeling she once had as a frightened child at a mummer’s festival, when one of the performers’ snarling lion’s head mask slipped, and for an instant she caught a glimpse of the whites of the human eyes underneath.

He bows his head deferentially. “Hello, my lady…”

“Sylva,” Sylva says, trying to shake off the uneasy feeling, and holding out her hand, weighed down with rings. 

She cannot explain it in the least. He is just some silly boy. His eyes are wide and innocent, his face flushed from her beauty, she assumes. “Sylva Santagar. Lord Hightower’s wife.”

“Lady Sylva,” he says, her hand in his for a brief moment. “Welcome to the Citadel.” His hand is soft but the pads of his fingers are unusually rough, as if he were a bowman or a musician. 

He lets go, nods to Alleras, and continues on his way, though he glances back at them once more.

“What a strange wretch,” Sylva says. 

“He’s been a bit out of sorts as late,” Alleras comments. “He used to be much shyer, though. I’m glad he’s found some stones.”


	42. Comfort (Nettles & Maris)

#9 - Maris/Nettles

Nettles lands Shep in the hills behind the motherhouse, reasonably certain he will not go after their grazing cattle, since he’s eaten well at Maidenpool, a ram every morning and every night. 

She proceeds down to the estate on foot, and for at least the duration of that brief walk, she could be a little girl again, roaming around Driftmark looking for something to eat, or better yet, steal so she could sell or barter it for a proper meal. 

A cool rain is falling by the time she reaches the gate. 

There is very little delay in admitting her entrance, as she has notes of passage and the gleaming obsidian pin that marks her as one of the true queen’s most leal on her velvet cloak- once she only ever dreamed of wearing velvet- and shortly thereafter she is escorted to a small dormitory room with no other furniture beyond a narrow cot, a dresser, and a simple writing desk, a few books and papers stacked atop it. 

Maris Baratheon raises her blue-eyed gaze coolly to meet Nettles. 

“You must be Lady Spice,” she says, setting down her book and smoothing the front of her plain grey smock. As a novitiate, she has not taken her vows yet, and her hair is not hidden underneath a cowl or wimple, but confined to a thick black plait. 

Nettles feels briefly at her own hair. The ivory hairbrush Daemon gave her is useless for it; it was made to brush out silken smooth locks or wavy ringlets, not Nettles’ voluminous coils. 

“Or was it Mistress Hull?” Maris continues, a finger to her chin. “I can never quite recall. Either way, you are the dragonseed, correct? Our beloved prince’s new favorite.”

That unnerves Nettles. Could rumors have already spread so quickly? She had thought they were- she doesn’t know what she thought. 

Frequently, in Daemon’s company, it is expressed to her just how little she knows, how naive and backwards he thinks her, as much as it seems to charm him. 

When she told him, rather defiantly, that she was no maid and he ought not to think he would be some great teacher to her, he only laughed and said it had no bearing on her innocence. 

That is what he likes about her, she is beginning to think. Not so much her fire or her sharp tongue or her willful ways, but how innocent and pure he deems her. 

Untouched by politics or intrigue. The stumbling novice he must educate on the proper ways of a lady. When they return to King’s Landing he says he shall outfit her as a great lady, that she will have her own manse and precious jewels and he will visit her every night. 

She asked where Shep would stay, and he only looked as her as though she were a silly little girl and said the dragonpit, of course. 

She thinks of him chained down, her poor brown old man, her Sheepstealer, and it makes her feel sick. 

“What, you thought we had no gossip here? Contrary to men’s beliefs, a still tongue can convey as much as a wagging one,” Maris says lightly, scooting forward on the cot and then rising to her full height, nearly a head taller than Nettles. “It only pleases them to think we are reduced to lifeless dolls in their absence. Now, tell me true, I hear your prince is hunting for Aemond’s head. But why should I know where he’s run off to?”

“Well, my lady,” Nettles says, “he is betrothed to your sister.”

Maris scoffs. “That marriage is about as likely to happen as pigs are to fly.” 

Nettles can tell she is glad of it by the sharp gleam in her eyes. 

“If you have any information,” Nettles says, “your… time here might… come to an end. The queen has that power.”

“Look at this,” Maris mocks, “a dragonseed speaking with the tongue of a wyrm. They say you all share the same one, in truth. Who told you to say that, my sweet Lady Spice? Daemon Blackheart? Promises are just ashes on the wind to men like him. They sign the line and burn the paper a heartbeat later.” Her gaze turns scrutinizing, and the lines of her hard mouth soften slightly as she looks Nettles over, less contemptuous and more… considering. “What has he promised you? You seem a sweet thing-,”

“I am seventeen and a woman grown,” Nettles snaps, raising her chin, even if it shows off her slit nose and her pockmarked face, and straightening her shoulders. “I am no man’s sweet thing. Now, if you’ve nothing for me, I should be on my way-,”

Maris sobers, it seems to her, and takes her hand, unbidden. As if to comfort her. 

Nettles almost tears her hand away, but Maris Baratheon's hand is soft and warm, unlike her cold tones and sharp words. It seems very unfair she should have such lovely hands. 

“I have one thing for you,” she says. “And do not think I pity you, only- I heard your dragon land, Nettles of Driftmark. Had I a dragon, I should live short but live well. Fly while you can. And do give it up for any man, prince or beggar.” 

She leans in closer, so Nettles can smell her breath and feel it tickling her ear, and whispers, “Harrenhal.”


	43. To say goodbye (Maegelle & Daella)

#25 - Daella & Maegelle

Maegelle cannot bring herself to say much of anything when she breaks fast that morning with her mother and father. This visit has been a short one, she is only here to see her siblings before their trip to Dragonstone for Daella’s wedding. 

If her father has noticed her frostiness, he says nothing about it, and excuses himself before long, needing to consult his Hand on some matter or another. 

That leaves Maegelle and her mother alone at the table. 

“I know,” Mother says, quietly, “that you disapprove, Maegelle. But it grieves me as well.”

“It does not grieve Father,” Maegelle has little appetite. She sets down her fork. “He seems rather pleased with this turn of events. As are you, Mother? Lord Rodrik was ever a dear friend.”

“He is not who I would have chosen for her-,”

“Then someone ought to have chosen better,” Maegelle snaps, then winces. She will need to confess that when she returns to the motherhouse. This is not Mother’s fault. Father is being unreasonable, and- and his pride has gotten the better of him. That must be it. 

He is proud, for all his virtues as a man and as a king, and it has always shamed him, to have a daughter like Daella, has always irked him, no matter how much she turns adoring eyes upon him. All he can see is her… her defects, her shortcomings. 

But she cannot help it is. It’s the way she was born. She tries. Seven knows she has always tried, Maegelle’s favorite sister, the sibling most dear to her. She is a sweet child- she is of age but she is still a sweet child at heart, not a woman. 

Certainly not a wife. 

After apologizing to her mother for her brusqueness, she finds Daella in her rooms, packing, or trying to. 

She’s always been a bit scattered, in more ways than one, and now she seems overwhelmed as she juggles heaps of clothes, before whirling to see Maegelle and brightening as if lit by the sun. 

“Maeggy!” Daella exclaims, tossing her clothes aside and embracing Maegelle tightly, knocking the breath from her despite her small size. 

She still looks so young, closer to twelve or thirteen than sixteen. Her face is still round, her smile dimpled, she has little in the way of breasts or hips. 

Maegelle offers up yet another prayer that the marriage will go unconsummated for at least another year. 

What need has Lord Rodrik of more children? His last wife gave him four, sons too. 

“I’ve come to say goodbye, Dae,” she says, fighting back the lump in her throat. “I… I am not sure when I shall see you again. Next year, perhaps. When you are settled.”

Daella sobers as well, biting her lower lip as she always has when disheartened, then brightens again. “I will write you!” she declares. “I have been working on it. Very hard, I promise, Maege. Look, I can show you-,” she hurries over to her cluttered desk, piled not with books or scrolls but some loose scarves and a vase full of flowers from the gardens, then comes back with a piece of paper. 

“Hasn’t my handwriting improved?” she asks tentatively, looking up at Maegelle as she would as a tiny girl of six or seven, close to tears because yet another tutor had deemed her simple-minded and weak-willed and washed their hands of her. 

Maegelle studies Daella’s halting scrawl for a moment, and feels her eyes sting. It has improved. She’s been signing her name, over and over again, Lady Daella Arryn, Lady Daella Arryn. 

More than anything, she prays Daella is happy. The past few years have been nothing but sorrow and humiliation for her. Rodrik Arryn does not deserve her sweet little sister, but… but perhaps Daella may find some peace in the Vale, away from the scorn and snide comments of court, and Father’s disapproving stare. 

“It looks beautiful,” she says, wrapping an arm around her sister again. “Yes. Please write me when you can, Daella. I shall always look forward to your letters.”

Daella seems relieved by that. “Oh, good. Saera said it looked like chickenscrawl. I don’t know why. Chickens can’t hold quills, everyone knows that. And even if they could, I do not think they would write my name, do you?”

“Saera is only jealous you are going off on a grand adventure,” Maegelle says, swallowing hard. “You know what she’s like.”

Daella giggles a little. “I guess. Well, I shall write you first, Maegelle! You are my favorite, you know.” She frowns. “Only don’t tell Mother I said that, please.”

“I won’t,” Maegelle says thickly, looking down at her eager, good-hearted little sister, who has only ever wanted her family to be proud of her, and only ever been met with derision and dismissal. “I promise.”


	44. For luck (Petra/Lyle)

#10 - Petra/Lyle

Petra finds him near the stands, adjusting his saddle. Harrenhal will be Lyle’s first tourney and she knows he is nervous enough that he got not so much as a moment of sleep last night. 

She also knows he will not win, of course, but he should at least beat out most of his fellow squires in the joust, he’s a good horseman, better with the lance, while Kit has always been stronger with the sword. 

Just thinking of Kit sends her own belly into a swirl of butterflies, but she ignores them, and they drop like leaden weights instead. 

Kit is intrigued with his Stark betrothed, though she seems somewhat less interested, and Petra knows she stand little chance of making any impression on him while the Stark girl is in their company, tossing her mane of dark hair and arguing with her boorish northern brothers. 

Lyle, on the other hand, has no such betrothed, no such intrigue, and, Petra is certain, thinks her just about the prettiest, cleverest girl he has ever met. 

That is perhaps not so shocking, as he is only fourteen to her thirteen, but it’s better than nothing. 

At least she does not have to manufacture his feelings for him. They are already there. 

And he looks close enough to his brother, from a distance, before one draws close enough to see that he is thinner and slighter, his auburn hair straight instead of curly like Kit’s, and a shade lighter, more coppery than bronze. Perhaps some of that will change with age. 

“For luck,” she says, pressing a four-leaf clover she found in the meadows behind the castle into his hand. 

Were she stupid, she would try to kiss him, but she is not. That is not how you win a boy like Lyle, who has as many insecurities and doubts as your average pig farmer does pimples. He has to be taken in hand with a silken bridle, not confronted with a clumsy kiss. 

Besides, she has never kissed anyone before, and she doesn’t want to mess it up her very first time. That would be excruciating, even if he didn’t notice. She would know. She would remember it. 

He breaks into a broad smile, close enough to his brother’s that it brings a blush rising readily to her cheeks. “Thank you. I hope it works.”

“It will,” Petra says, confidently, then spares him another smile, and is on her way, adjusting her pale green cloak and the giant’s head pin that clasps it. 

She hates this pin, but it was a gift from Lord Tully for her last name day, and these little things matter. One day she will pry the rubies from its eyes, and sell them for the best price she can fetch. 

Just not today.


	45. Because you are dying (Daemon/Rhea)

#19 - Daemon/Rhea

Rhea really does not know what they expect of her. 

She thinks herself capable enough in most situations, but to suddenly be called upon to play the aggrieved and doting wife because her white wyrm of a husband fell during a hunt, knocked his head, and now lingers near death, is really a bit much. 

She’s not such a bronze bitch, as he would call her, to take active pleasure in his death, but she won’t pretend to be overcome with grief, either. 

Their marriage was a disaster from beginning to end. He was never much else but a spiteful, vindictive, conniving, sneering, arrogant bastard to her, and she will readily admit she gave as good as got. 

She is a Royce of Runestone, was her father’s heir until his own death three years past, and she was not raised to play the meek-tempered little wife who would hold out her hand for her husband to take a shit in. 

Though, is that not what he always sought for himself, Hightower’s position? 

If not for her sober surroundings, she might have a little chuckle over that. Instead she holds his limp hand in her own, wonders that she might accidentally stir him back to life if she dares hate him too hard. 

Every so often his eyes flicker open, but she can tell he does not recognize her in the least, because his familiar scowl or sneer is absent from his handsome face, and he has greeted her with one or the other every day in each other’s presence since perhaps their wedding day. 

The bedding was about as much of a catastrophe as the rest of it. He had… difficulties and she swears he never forgave her for having to muffle her laughter in her hand. 

He retaliated by insinuating the cause of it was her lack of breasts. 

She responded by inquiring whether crooning ‘Uncle’ at him might make him more amenable to her. 

Perhaps had they both been a little older, and had more sense than pride, they could have later laughed over it. 

As it stands, they’ve never shared a chuckle over anything, and while she will not grieve him, not really, that does make her almost a little sad. 

He did have a nice laugh, she will give him that much.


	46. Encouragement (Sansa/Mya)

#11 - Mya/Sansa

Sansa leaves off dancing with the Waynwood boys in order to make her way through the crowded hall to Mya’s side. 

Mya is leaning against the wall, looking somewhat awkward and out of place with her hair properly brushed and wearing a very old dress that used to be Myranda’s mothers. T

he style of it is a good thirty years out of date, but the deep green brings out the brilliant blue of Mya’s eyes. 

She blinks in surprise when she sees Sansa sidle up next to her, setting her cup down on a nearby table and inclining her head sheepishly. “Lady Alayne.”

“Who are you looking at?” Sansa asks curiously, scanning the crowd of familiar and unfamiliar faces- lords, knights, squires, serving boys and children underfoot- then stops and turns back to Mya with something like a smirk. “Is it Ser Lothor?”

“What? No!” Mya says far too quickly, picking up her cup to take another quick swig of her cider. “I mean- no, of course not, my lady. I- why would I be looking at the Captain?”

“I don’t know,” Sansa says, taking Mya’s arm teasingly, the way Myranda always takes hers. “Perhaps you find him charming.” 

Lothor Brune is in a corner, speaking with a few freeriders, looking as though he’s bought himself a new leather jerkin, though his boots appear as scuffed as ever. 

“I don’t think anything about him,” Mya says, mulishly. 

Sansa exhales, then glances back up at Mya. Neither of them are short girls, but Mya is still near a head taller than her. “Would you like to dance with him?”

“I don’t dance- I can’t dance,” Mya shakes her head, though her face is apple red. “I… Not any of the dances people do here, anyways.” She knows the country dances, she means, but not the ones ordinarily reserved for the nobility.

“Well,” says Sansa, “I should be happy to give you a lesson.” 

She surprises even herself with that comment, not just Mya. Once the thought of dancing with someone like Mya, even out of kindness, would have been laughable to her, ludicrous. She is a mountain guide, an errand girl, a servant. 

But what of it? Alayne is a bastard. Perhaps her mother was a servant. Or an errand girl. Or a mountain guide. 

Though the thought of Littlefinger, who is so vain, bedding down with anyone like that is almost enough to make her laugh.

“You don’t mean that, my lady,” Mya is shaking her head, her bangs falling into her eyes.

“I do,” Sansa declares, more firmly than she expected to. “I should be happy to. Shall we?” She holds out her hand to Mya.

After a moment, Mya grasps it, her palm rough and calloused against Sansa’s, and follows her reluctantly out onto the floor.


	47. Encouragement (Brienne & Catelyn)

#11 - Brienne/Catelyn

Brienne is exhausted by the time she returns to Riverrun with the Stark girls, though her exhaustion is reflected in the faces of her hosts, who are fresh off putting down a failed coup from the Freys. 

They say the Twins is swimming with corpses, and King Robb was wounded, but has thankfully recovered enough to be out of bed, though his head had to be shaved to stitch his scalp back together. 

His Westerling queen is attached to his side- they say there was some great scandal with her family, that they might have been colluding with the Freys, for her uncle and brother are both dead, and her mother rumored to be a prisoner in all but name, confined to her a tower room. Still, he must not suspect his wife of having any part in it, for when he rises, Queen Jeyne is helping him up, though he lets go of her once he’s on his feet.

Lady Catelyn is just behind her, unwilling to let go of either of her daughters, both of whom are clinging to her with ferocity- Sansa has her head buried in the crook of her mother’s pale neck, while Arya is clinging to her other arm like a toddling babe- but she still manages to get a hand free to gently prod Brienne forward. 

“My son wishes to honor you for your service to our family,” she says. “You have given me the greatest gifts in the world, Lady Brienne.”

I am not a lady, Brienne almost says, but instead turns and proceeds forward. 

She expects some quick thanks, perhaps an offer of money- which she will refuse, of course, she did not do it for the coin- or of marriage- which they might be grateful for her to refuse, who would want the burden of finding her a husband? 

Unbidden, her mind flashes to Jaime, but he is back by the queen’s side now, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, and for all his help and his strange, twisted sense of honor, she should still not be thinking of him like this. She is simply grateful to him, that is all. She would never have managed to locate Lady Sansa without his information.

To her shock, Robb Stark unsheathes his sword. “If you would kneel, my lady,” he says. 

Brienne waits for the small chamber to ring with laughter and snickers, but there are none. Yet surely this must be some jape.

“My- Your Grace?” she ventures, haltingly.

“Kneel,” he says, and there is no mockery in his eyes- he has his mother’s eyes, truly. 

She glances back at Lady Catelyn and her daughters, and some heat rises in her freckled face at the fierce, determined look on Catelyn Stark’s. She simply inclines her head, chin raised proudly. 

Proudly for Brienne. No one has ever looked at her with pride before, save her father, and that did not feel the way this does. 

Brienne kneels at once.


	48. Anger (Minisa/Brynden)

#21 - Minisa/Brynden

Brynden realizes he has never seen her truly angry before this. Irritated or frustrated, yes, exasperated and impatient, but never truly angry. 

He had chalked it up to her Whent blood when he first met her, after her betrothal to his brother was announced, that a childhood at gloomy and cavernous Harrenhal had made for a sober and reserved young woman, as slow to shout as she was slow to smile. 

But he has seen her smile, many times, and there is nothing slow about it. If anything it is a flash of lightning across her face, like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. 

Minisa is always beautiful. But she is lovely when she smiles, and her beauty is terrifying when she is angry.

“Enough,” she hisses, still careful to keep her voice down, though they are isolated in the godswood. “Enough. I will hear no more of it, I will not have your judgement-,”

“It is not you I am judging,” he snaps back at her. “It is his selfishness-,”

“Selfishness? You are still a boy at heart, though you have been a man grown for many years now!” Minisa retorts furiously, spots of color in her high, pale cheeks, sharp as glass. “But for that matter, what passes between a man and wife is none of your concern, Brynden-,”

“It is my concern when he is my brother, and you my-,”

They both pause. Minisa presses her lips together. He can hear his own breathing, haggard and harsh as if he’d just climbed a mountain. 

Sometimes he feels it, around her. Heady and hard to breathe. Choking on his own breath. It’s a sin, he knows it is, he has never had any- any right to-,

“I,” Minisa says tartly, “am your goodsister. I appreciate your concern, Bryn, but you presume too much. What were you thinking? I thought you might strike him!”

“You have suffered enough,” Brynden snaps, “for the sake of providing my brother with children. Well, he has three of them, healthy and hale, two fine daughters and a hearty little son. What need has he for more?” 

He exhales angrily, then continues, “He may have forgotten the first two you lost in the cradle, but-,”

She slaps him. 

Brynden blinks, then wants to crumble at the look on her face. “Minisa- Min. Minna, you know I meant-,”

“I know what you meant,” she says, hoarsely. “You think I do not see them in my dreams every night? My sons? You think I would not give anything to hold them, one more time?” Her voice cracks, and she looks away from him, wiping at her eyes. 

He resists the urge to pull her close. The time for that is long since past. He swore- they both agreed it was improper. No matter that it went no further than that, it was improper. 

She is his brother’s wife. He is her goodbrother. 

“I only worry for you,” he says. “Truly. Edmure is but three. If… if anything should happen-,”

“That is not for you or me to decide, Brynden. We must leave that to the Seven.”

The Seven and Hoster, god of the rivers, of this keep, and of both of them, Brynden thinks bitterly. 

Hoster, who would not be content with three. Who ought to have sworn never to put his wife in the birthing bed again, after her agonizing labor with Edmure, after the heartbreak of her first two losses before the girls were born. 

Perhaps he has forgotten. Brynden has not. Brynden will never.


	49. To say good morning (Arianne/Edmure)

#7 Arianne/Edmure

His quiet cursing is what wakes her, a week after their wedding. 

Arianne sits up, rubbing at her eyes, then looks blearily over at him, only to see that Edmure has rolled over onto his belly and his chin balanced on his pillow, looking utterly miserable. 

Even in the dim lighting of her spacious bedchamber, she can see the cause of this misery. They spent near four hours yesterday at the Water Gardens with her cousins and little brother. 

Her skin will have darkened slightly from the sun, but his is bright red, from his waist to his face. 

“Oh, no,” she sighs, and he echoes it with a muffled groan.

“It feels like I just rolled over hot coals for a few days,” he complains.

“Our maester has healing balms,” she assures him, “and cool compresses. Oh, you poor thing.” 

She leans down, careful not to brush his reddened skin, and places a delicate kiss on his mussed auburn curls. 

He sits up, wincing, but manages a sheepish smile at her. 

“I suppose this is what I get for running around like a child all day yesterday. My father would have been horrified.”

“To see his son having a water fight with little children?” Arianne teases, taking his hand, which at least is not so badly burned.

“He’s always thought me immature and reckless.”

I like you immature and reckless, she almost says, but she does not want to offend her husband’s pride so early into their marriage. 

In truth, she does not know Edmure well at all, but she does know that he is honest, and kind, and infatuated with her, and she would be lying if she said his looks had no effect on her, either. 

She likes his ribald sense of humor and his quickness to laugh and smile. She likes how much he clearly cares for the people, his and now hers as well. 

Other men would have been uncomfortable to cavort about surrounded by common children and their parents. But Edmure had one ragged urchin on his shoulders, swung another about by the arms, laughing and cheering as if they were his own kin. 

She thinks she could love him for that, among other things. 

“Well, I think you were the talk of the Water Gardens,” she says, “and not just because of how pale you are in the sun, Ser.”

That gets a chuckle out of him, and he kisses her on the mouth, slow and tender, though they must stop when she forgets herself and drapes her arms around his shoulder, provoking more winces and curses from him.


	50. Protect (Lewyn/Jeyne)

#8 - Jeyne Swann/Lewyn

Jeyne does not let go of him until she no longer hears the shouts and scream in the distance, only the sounds of his stallion’s hoofbeats and the snowy forest around them. 

The Kingswood has not seen much snow compared to the lands to the north of it, but there is still enough underfoot to send up pale white clouds with any crunch of hooves, as Ser Lewyn slows his mount from a gallop to a canter to a trot. 

“The princess,” Jeyne says, “where is she? Did- is she alright?”

“Princess Elia is with Selmy,” he says, “she will be fine.” 

Jeyne studies his face; it is hard not to when she is in front of him in the saddle, after he pulled her from her own faltering mare and atop his steed, fending off Simon Toyne at the same time. He’s breathing hard, but other than that seems uninjured, through his brow is furrowed. 

Ser Lewyn looks a great deal like his niece, though his skin is a shade darker, and his face more square than hers. Not handsome in the traditional sense, but there is something honest and noble about him all the same, she thinks. 

Though perhaps that is just her nerves talking.

“Thank you,” she says, thickly. “For saving me, Ser. I- shall never forget it.” She hopes she doesn’t sound like a timid child. 

She is two-and-twenty, widowed once, childless but far from an innocent maid. She hopes he doesn’t think her foolish and hysterical, though she is proud that her eyes are dry, that she is not weeping, though she is trembling.

“There’s no need to thank me, my lady,” he says, firmly. “I should have been happy to kill Toyne then and there. But it seems the gods have granted him a few more days, unless Ser Arthur caught up to him.”

Jeyne smiles thinly at that, then turns around again. His one arm is still locked around her waist, holding her in place lest she slip, since she is riding sidesaddle. 

She can feel his breath warming the back of her head. The forest melds around them into a greyish white blend. A crow caws in the distance. 

“I will bring you to the city gates,” he says, “that should be safe enough, unless we can find the others before them. But I will not risk riding into battle with you in the saddle with me, my lady. Lest you have some blade concealed on your person you mean to use.”

Perhaps she should be offended by his jape, but Jeyne cannot help but chuckle along with him. “Mayhaps I should start. It cannot be so different from needlework, can it?”

“I should think not. Elia’s brother Prince Oberyn once showed her how to throw a dagger for a lark, when they were young. Their mother walked in one her knocking an orange off his head with it, and her laid up in bed with a cold.”

Her laughter rings out into the snowy woods, mixing pleasantly with his.


	51. Protect (Donella/Robb)

#8 - Robb/Nell

He won’t stop touching the fresh scar on her chin from where she split it open while falling to the ground. 

Nevermind that the men who were pursuing her are all dead, that the lands around the Twins are a lichyard for the Freys, that her father’s head is moldering on a spike outside Seagard, where she was evacuated to in the wake of the betrayal- Nell cares not so much for any of that but that Robb is alive and well, that Lysara is alive and well, that she did not lose them, or Dana, or Catelyn- a small scar seems a very low price to pay when she could have lost everything, seen her world crumble around her overnight.

“I am fine,” she says, for what must be the hundredth time. “Robb. Truly. You should not be in here fussing over me, you should be seeing to your men.” 

He still must traverse the Neck; there is no longer much to worry about crossing the Twins again, since House Frey is now under the somewhat more reasonable leadership of Ser Perwyn, but it will be agony to let him go again, when she almost lost him the first time. 

Still, they cannot simply huddle here at Seagard for the months to come. The Ironborn must be dealt with and Winterfell must be reclaimed.

“I am not fussing over you,” he says, stroking the scabbing scar with his thumb one last time, and then pulling her close to embrace her soundly, his face buried in her hair. 

He is warm and solid but his hands on her back are shaking slightly. “I am thanking whatever gods there be that I have you in my arms, and not on a funeral pyre.” 

It is not like him to speak so harshly, but she can forgive it in him now; when he came upon her with the Smalljon and Dacey Mormont and Grey Wind, saw her screaming and struggling on the ground as Edwyn Frey strove to tear Lysara from her grip, he fell upon the Freys like a man possessed, all but vaulted from his horse, despite being injured, and she had never seen him in combat so close at hand before, but had no choice this time, for Edwyn Frey bled out atop her when Robb hack off his head while Grey Wind came away with an arm, still twitching.


	52. Relief (Tom/Amy)

#2 - Tom/Amy

His shoes are wearing a hole in the musty hall carpeting, but finally the door of the flat creaks open, and the midwife’s assistant, a pinch-faced girl no older than him, waves him through. 

“It’s a girl,” she informs him straight off, as if expecting him to be vocally disappointed. 

Through every visit the old hag and her sour little apprentice have been exchanging little looks and comments about how young he and Amy are- how reckless and heedless, is the implication, how immature and naive of them- he took great pleasure in the fact that their certificate of marriage was sealed, signed, and notarized, lying on the kitchen table, by their second visit. 

He got their wedding bands on a steep employee discount from Borgin and Burke’s, if only because he was the one who broke the curse on them- apparently they used to sever fingers when you tried to take them off. Bit difficult to resell jewelry with that sort of reputation. 

He’ll get her a proper engagement ring soon, never mind that they never really had much of an engagement. 

It doesn’t matter, it’s just the status symbol of it all, and he doesn’t care how shabby the flat is, he won’t have his wife going around looking like hers was a hasty little marriage with a clerk for a witness and a judge presiding over it, although that is very much what it was. 

He nods sharply, following her into the bedroom, where the midwife is cleaning off her hands with a wet rag. 

Amy is propped up in bed, red-faced and glassy-eyed, as if she’d been weeping for hours on end, or just stumbled out of a burning building. 

Her hair is pulled back from her swollen face with an old scarf and she looks up listlessly at his arrival, but none of that matters when his gaze lands on the small, whimpering bundle in her arms. 

Tom sits down on the very edge of the bed, pulling back the faded pink blanket, and takes in the sight of his daughter for the first time. His nose wrinkles. The last infant he saw were the ones at Wool’s as a boy, and the older children had been strictly forbidden from hanging about the nursery. Are they really all so… wretched looking? 

“She gets her beauty from her father,” Amy intones, and he glances up at her, relieved that she is making a joke, even if it isn’t a very good one. 

“You did wonderfully,” he says, brushing his thumb across the dried tear tracks on her face.

She snorts at that. “How would you know? You were sat outside for the past hour.”

“I wasn’t sat anywhere,” he can’t help but retort, then carefully extricates the infant from her limp arms, squeezing her clammy hand. “You should go to sleep. You look terrible.”

The midwife mutters something behind his back. 

Amy smiles faintly at him, then turns away with some difficulty, closing her eyes immediately. 

Tom cradles his daughter in one arm, already thinking of names- he doesn’t care who he has to bribe or threaten, she is not putting ‘Mae’ on the birth certificate anymore than he was going to let her put ‘Ben’ or ‘Jack’- and strokes her shoulder with the other, fighting back the surge of relief. 

He wasn’t frightened of course, not really, but some small part of him was… concerned it might end the way it had for his mother. As ridiculous a worry as that was. 

His mother was a coward, a witch frightened of her own magic. Amy is nothing like her. 

She would never leave him- them- he thinks, studying the infant’s red, wrinkled face- like that. 

Never.


	53. Anger (Jonelle & Aegon)

#21 - Jonelle/Aegon

He comes to her after Jon Connington has ordered her confined to her quarters for breaking into Griffin Roost’s ravenry and attempting to send a letter to Winterfell. 

To whoever holds it now. 

She prays it is Bran, that those rumors are false, that he is alive and well, that at least he and Rickon remain, even if her sisters and Robb are lost forever. 

But Connington, of course, would not have it, and wasted little time in informing her that Winterfell is in fact held by Bolton hands at present, and that when the King’s armies reclaim it for her, she will be named Lady Stark with a husband of the King’s choosing. 

Aegon has to step over the shattered fragments of the vase she threw at the door, but eventually makes his way to her, standing before the window, staring angrily out at the storm sweeping across the bay, sending icy rain lashing against the glass. 

“Jonelle,” he says, touching her arm gently. Jonelle turns, stiff-backed. “I know,” he says, “you are upset. But Jon is only trying to look after both of our interests. It would not do for you to reveal yourself so soon.”

“Why?” she asks sharply. “You’ve revealed yourself. In full Targaryen glory.”

“Storm’s End is nearly within our grasp,” he says. “After that, the whole of the Stormlands will unite under our banners. As they should have united for my father, all those years ago. For our father. But only after we take King’s Landing- then we might turn our attention to the North. When the winter has passed. It is the only sensible move.”

“There is nothing sensible about this,” she says. “They threw over your father and grandfather. What makes you think they will accept you?”

His mouth twitches slightly, the barest semblance of a grim smile. “Well, your dragon, for one.”

Ghostling was named for the wolf she lost in King’s Landing, all those years ago. Now he is confined to an iron cage, and she is only permitted to visit him twice a day, to feed him and play with him, and always in Aegon’s presence. 

She is not stupid. She sees the truth for what it is. It may be her egg, but Connington and his men mean for it to be Aegon’s beast, for it to be him in the saddle, the triumphant conqueror.

Who has conquered little and less, compared to his aunt to the East. They say she has three, great beasts now. 

Jonelle wonders if Ghostling will even live to see his first year. He is so small, a smoky greyish red. 

She takes Aegon’s hand in hers, and then squeezes as hard as she can, staring him down. 

He winces for a moment, then sets his jaw and refuses to tear his hand from hers. 

“My dragon,” Jonelle says. “Mayhaps you should remember that, Your Grace. He hatched for me. In my arms. In my flames. While you were frozen with fear like a little child-,”

That does it. He rips his hand away, his violet gaze darkening. “You and your dragon, as you call him,” he says, “live comfortably at my pleasure. Don’t make me regret it, sister.”

Jonelle gives him a hard little smile at that, and turns back to the window to watch the storm. Whatever he says next is drowned out by the crash of thunder and the waves.


	54. Annoyance (Genna & Minisa)

#22 - Minisa/Genna

Minisa is reading under a willow tree when Genna makes her entrance, every bit as dramatic as Minisa has come to expect from her these past few weeks. 

Hoster is, as usual, locked in the death throes of a struggle with Brynden over whether this betrothal will in fact be the one to stick. 

Brynden may yet win out, but Minisa can tell he is flagging fast, for this time the lady herself is present, and while she should not say Brynden was overcome with love for Genna Lannister at first sight, she has certainly made an impression on all of them. 

Genna flounces down into the long grass beside Minisa, tossing her mane of golden curls over her shoulder. Minisa knows she should not make these sorts of vain comparisons, but cannot help but feel they could not be more opposite. 

Minisa is tall and willowy, with high cheekbones, a long ovalene face, and straight red gold hair that falls to her waist in a simple plait. 

Genna is short and shapely, with a rounded, winsome face and curls that bounce around her shoulders, bringing out the jade green hue of her eyes. 

“Your goodbrother,” Genna informs her, sharply, “is a fool. And an arrogant, prideful one at that.”

“Brynden is very rebellious,” Minisa says. It is simply an observation. Second sons are supposed to be dutiful and supportive. 

Brynden, for his part, refers to challenge and contradict at every turn, particularly when it comes to marriage. He has a willful streak that would have been beaten or scolded out of most women, but as he is not a woman, it is considered roguish and charming, rather than obstinate and defiant. 

Well, except when it comes to Hoster, who certainly does not find it charming in the least.

“He acts as though marriage to me would be akin to a slow death by flaying,” Genna scoffs, her mouth forming a near perfect oh, as she continues, “Me. A Lannister of the Rock. Is he aware that my dowry could be used to finance enough ships to ford both forks of the Trident at once? I am not some little Frey or Piper that he might turn his freckly, speckly nose up at! If he thinks he is going to send me home with my tail between my legs, so my father can wed me to the next imbecile who bothers to ask, he is sorely-,”

“You see, Brynden,” Minisa says mildly, as he steps from around the other side of the tree, where he was sitting and having a nice young man’s sulk, which they call ‘thinking’. “You really are left with no choice but to accept the Lady Genna’s very favorable suit, Ser.”

To his credit, Brynden does look impressed with how Genna refuses to flush or look away, instead narrowing those cat-like green eyes of hers at him, raising her chin.


	55. Encouragement (Aegon/Barba)

#11 - Barba/Aegon

Aegon knows none of them can understand, or are willing to understand, why he chose Barba over all the others all those years ago. 

She was not the most beautiful nor the most wealthy among them. She was not the most charming, the wittiest, nor the most graceful. She was two years older than him at the time, fifteen to his thirteen, and a head taller. 

That head contained not flowing locks of golden blonde or fiery red but a plain dark brown, and the face to match it was smooth and unmarked but altogether forgettable utterly ordinary, aside from her strikingly pale ice, like chips of ice in her pale face. 

She was dressed far simply than the other women and girls present, in clothes as dark and plain as his own, for she was in mourning too- her father then her mother, dead in a span of six months, leaving her grim older brother Domeric as lord at the eight of eighteen. 

But perhaps that is what drew him to her. 

She did not pretend at great joy or pleasure to be in his company. She did not lie about her state of affairs. She simply presented herself, asked for aid for her people, not for her own enrichment, and left it to him to decide what he was going to do.

He appreciated it then, and he appreciates it now, on the dawn of his sixteenth name day. 

They still have not consummated the marriage in their three years wed, but Barba has never complained nor even inquired as to why he is not comfortable taking her to bed yet. 

If anything, she seemed relieved he had little intention of consummating it on their wedding night, and in the weeks after expressed to him that her own mother had nearly died in childbirth at age sixteen, so why should she not wish to wait as long as possible?

Now she watches him, as grave and quiet as ever, as he adjust his circlet, examining his reflection in the looking glass with some displeasure. 

He’s never liked looking at himself. He sees the dead; his parents, brothers, friends, all staring back at him, reflected in his hollow eyes. 

“It will not be pleasant,” she says, calmly, “but you are ready.” 

“I know,” he says, then pauses. He is still not able to bring himself to actively invite someone else’s touch, save perhaps Viserys’, but Barba takes the faint signal for what it is, and squeezes his hand, firmly, her skin pleasantly cool against his own. 

He feels unusually flushed. 

“I will be right behind you,” she says. 

Aegon frowns. “Beside me,” he corrects, and stiffly offers her his arm.

She looks surprised, but takes it with a slight sliver of a smile.


	56. Annoyance (Stannis/Lysa)

#22 - Stannis/Lysa

At least he is young and could be handsome if he smiled more, Lysa thinks to herself as she picks at her food beside her new husband. 

Father was terribly displeased when the news came that Jon Arryn had succumbed to initially minor injuries taken at the Trident, which had become infected and contributed to his quick decline. 

Lysa cried, of course, he was her husband and wives should weep for their husbands when they die, but she can’t quite pretend that some part of her was not relieved. 

Jon was a dutiful and honorable man, she supposes, or at least what’s what Cat always said, but he was old and wrinkled and his breath smelled. 

Stannis Baratheon’s breath does not smell, but he seems aware that he has only been married to her to quell her lord father’s annoyance, and because Robert was at a loss as who to appoint as Hand, with Cat’s Ned shut himself (and her sister) up at Winterfell, still in a fury over what happened to the poor Targaryen babes. 

So Robert had to name his brother Hand, much to his Small Council’s displeasure, and Lysa went from being wife of one Hand to another.

A weight emerges on her wrist. She’d been scraping her fork along the inside of her plate, and her husband has now pressed down on her wrist with two fingers so that she is forced to set down her fork. 

She is a little surprised and offended by it, but she would have been frightened had he suddenly grabbed her by the wrist. 

“If you are not going to eat,” he says, through his teeth, “I would ask that you cease that infernal noise, my lady.”

Infernal noise. He talks like someone’s grandfather.

Lysa has to suppress an amused smile, then sees the look in his blue eyes darken and quickly averts her gaze. 

She does not know much about Stannis Baratheon, but she knows he has a prickly temper and an even thinner skin than old Jon Arryn, who looked, when not in his armor, as if a strong wind might tear him to pieces. 

“Of course, my lord,” Lysa says, to her plate and her half-eaten food. 

He quickly removes his fingers from her wrist. 

She rubs curiously at the indents left in her skin, watching him drink his lemon water. 

At least his breath might smell very fresh, compared to her last husband. Perhaps she can suggest he try his water with mint leaves, from time to time. 

That would be even better.


	57. Apology (Rhaella & Joanna)

#5 - Rhaella/Joanna

Joanna is the one who sits up with her the night after she loses her second pregnancy. 

Rhaella knows she is acting like a child. It was not very far along at all; no more than four moons, Maester Pycelle estimates. She is eighteen years old, she will conceive again soon. 

Very soon, if Aerys has his way. 

He embraced her and stroked her hair as she wept when she told him, in an unusual display of sweetness from her brother-husband who is most often alternating between bitter disappointment and scornful spite in his dealings with her, but of course he followed that by assuring her that the next child he sired on her would be stronger than the last, as strong as their firstborn. 

Rhaegar is three now, and Rhaella does desperately want to give him a sibling. A son or a daughter. 

She should be praying for a daughter, as Aerys keeps reminding her. 

She would not have expected him to be so set on it, given how upset he was when their own betrothal was announced, but it has gradually occurred to her that perhaps it was not that she was his sister that upset him so, but that she was simply not the woman he wanted to wed. 

That woman sits beside her now. 

Joanna is her best friend, her only real friend, save for Loreza, who is more like an elder sister, near fifteen years older than them. 

But Rhaella is not blind, nor stupid. Joanna is due to be married in five moons, and it is clear to all the court that she loves Tywin and no other, but still Aerys looks, and leers, and looks some more, and makes his little comments and japes which have ceased to bring anything but a barely restrained scowl to his so-called ‘great friend’s golden face.

Joanna, for her part, always keeps the same stiffly polite smile, not so much as blinking at whatever ribald suggestion Aerys thinks passes for humor.

She is not smiling politely now, but holding Rhaella close as Rhaella sobs in a very unqueenly fashion into her robe. 

“I’m sorry,” Rhaella says thickly at one moment, “I just- I suppose I thought, if I could… if Rhaegar and I could survive Harrenhal, this pregnancy would be terribly easy, and I… I don’t know. Jaehaerys for a second son, I thought, for Father, or- or Shaera for our mother-,”

“You will have other children,” Joanna says firmly, stroking her back. “Strong, beautiful children. Like Rhaegar. You must always believe that. Truly. Believing is half the battle. You will fall pregnant again, and it will be a handsome, hearty little prince or a darling princess. You must not fear, Rhaella.”

But that is easy for Joanna to say, Rhaella cannot help but think bitterly, Joanna who is marrying a man she loves, whose children will no doubt come easy to her, who will always know she holds her husband’s highest regard and esteem. 

Rhaella has none of that, save her ladies and Rhaegar, and she has always tried to be content, to not wish for more, but sometimes- sometimes it is easier said than done.


	58. After a nightmare (Lyanna & Robert)

#16 - Robert/Lyanna

Lyanna has just finally drifted off, her attempts at sleep hampered by the storm raging outside the keep, when she hears her bedroom door creak open. 

Half-asleep, her heart pounds in her chest and she sits bolt upright in bed, rigid with unknown terror of- of what, she is not sure, her husband’s shade or her own guilt? 

“Mother,” someone whispers. “Mother, are you awake?”

She exhales, struggles to wet her lips with her tongue for a moment, then says, hoarsely, “I’m awake, Robbie. What’s wrong?”

“I had a bad dream.” Her youngest child treads closer to the bed; he will be four in a few moons. 

Robert was named for his father, as is very obvious by his classical Baratheon looks. 

After Lyarra and Cassana he was her first, and only, son of her marriage. Robert was off to war for the latter half of the pregnancy, and asked that she name him, if he was a son, for his own father Steffon. 

Then Robert died, and all eyes were upon her, expectant, of course, and when it was a boy there was so much rejoicing and clamor that she felt she had little choice but to call the child Robert. 

How could she not? Her husband was dead, but he’d left behind a son. 

It was what was expected of her. 

She opens up her arms, and Robert scrambles eagerly up into the bed. If anything he reminds her more of Renly than his father, Renly who all but clung to her in the weeks and months following Robert’s death. Stannis kept his distance, to no one’s surprise, least of all hers, but she and Renly have, at least, had a relationship akin to what she once had with Ben. 

She misses her brothers very much, but there will be no travel from the North in the middle of winter, and she has had to content herself with Ned’s brief but warm letters. 

She wonders if he is mourning her husband more than she ever has or will, and feels another flash of guilt, as lightning flickers outside. 

Robert smells like the nursery, and buries his head in her chest, sniffling while she rubs circles into his small back. 

She loves him very much, even when she sees his father staring accusingly back at her from behind his blue eyes. 

She will always love him very much, she tells herself, firmly. Always.


	59. Annoyance (Duncan/Jenny)

#22 - Duncan/Jenny

“Oh, now you’ve done it!” the girl exclaims, tossing down what appears to be a makeshift trident that may have begun its life as a haying pitchfork. 

Duncan has found that since he became crown prince the willingness of anyone beyond his mother and father to chastise or rebuke him has significantly decreased, and is shocked when this ire is turned on him. 

The girl can be no older than himself, perhaps eighteen at the oldest, and is more than a head shorter, but none of that seems to prevent her from advancing on him angrily, despite the fact that he is mounted on horseback and armed, even if he is dressed very simply, in the plainest clothes he could scrounge up from his wardrobe. 

He finds it makes most of his travel much easier, really, and frequently thanks the Seven that he inherited his mother’s ‘common’ Blackwood looks; a long, plain face, dark brown hair close cropped to his scalp, and small dark eyes on either side of his long nose. 

“Well?” she snaps, hands on her hips. “You ought to be ashamed, scaring off my fish like that! I had that net set up for near an hour! That would have kept me and mine fed for a week, until you came thundering along the river like- like some bloody herd of aurochs!”

She really is a very strange little creature, he thinks. Her auburn hair springs from her head and is barely constrained to two thick braids, her eyebrows are knitted together on her heavily freckled face, and there is a prominent gap between her two front teeth. She’s dressed in little more than rags, by his estimation, and is noticeably barefoot, said feet covered in mud and silt. A farmer’s tan covers what he can see of her wiry arms and necks. 

Some local smallcrofter’s daughter, he assumes.

He dismounts, expecting her to draw back, but she stays where she is, face still bright pink with anger. 

“I should be happy to pay you back in full for the losses you’ve incurred,” he says, “if you would tell me your name, fishergirl.”

She flares, takes another step towards him, then slips in the muck. He quickly reaches out to steady her, but no sooner has his hand brushed hers then she bats it away in annoyance. 

Duncan is almost shocked. No one has… swatted him so casually since he was a child of nine or ten. 

“My name is Jenny. Jenny of Oldstones or Jenny Mudd if you like, but always Jenny, not Jenna or Ginny.” She bites her lower lip, then adds, “and I’m not a fishergirl, I’m a midwife’s prentice, and now I think you ought to tell your name, ‘fore I take any coin off you.”

“Duncan,” he says, once again grateful he is not a Jaehaerys or a Daeron, like his brothers. “My family calls me Dunk, sometimes.”

“Duncan,” she says, chewing it over (along with her lip). “That’s a good name. I like it.” She looks at him as though she expects him to truly be pleased and relieved that she does. Oddly enough, he finds she is right. He is glad she likes his name. 

“Thank you,” he says. “I was named for my father’s best friend. I’m very fond of it myself.”


	60. To say goodbye (Aegon/Olyvar)

#25 - Young Griff/Olyvar

His army has advanced as far as Bronzegate when he makes the acquaintance of the Lord of Rosby, one of the first houses of the Crownlands to declare for him. The others, he assumes, are waiting until he draws close enough to the capital to prove a credible threat. 

That’s alright. With the Stormlands and Dorne united under Targaryen banners for the first time in near seventeen years, he is one. 

Jon told him that Lord Rosby had to be an ailing old man by now, but he finds that Lord Rosby is no old man at all, but a much younger one, near or about his own age, with a thin face and a head of dark hair that brushes against his shoulders, even when smoothed back along his scalp. His velvet doublet is pure white, slashed through with red lines that form a point across his thin chest, and studded with black beadwork. 

Despite his slight frame, he nonetheless carries himself stiffly and proudly, dropping to one knee before Aegon, who is sitting a makeshift throne in House Buckler’s gaudy hall.

“A Frey,” Jon pronounces, with obvious disgust. “One of the old man’s wretched get.”

“Is my Lord Hand correct?” Aegon asks Lord Rosby. “Are you a Frey masquerading as one of my loyal subjects? I had heard tell that your house was in the habit of killing kings.”

“Pretenders,” Jon says, coldly.

“Would-be kings, then,” Aegon corrects himself with a slight smirk, leaning forward in his seat. 

There is the briefest flicker of a scowl across the young man’s face, then it is gone.

“My father was Walder Frey,” Rosby says, pale face uplifted so that the light from the high windows behind Aegon casts golden winter on his face. “But my mother was Bethany Rosby, cousin to Lord Giles, and I am Olyvar Rosby, rightful heir to his title. I do pronounce you the rightful King of the Seven Kingdoms, Your Grace, and I devote my men and lands to your cause in claiming the throne from the Lannisters.”

“You may approach,” Aegon says, ignoring the look Jon is giving him. 

Olyvar does so. Aegon pushes himself out of his seat; he is a good four inches taller than the other man. 

Up close, he can see the wariness in those dark eyes, but beyond that, a grim determination. 

“It is my understanding that you once served under Robb Stark,” he says, “who the Lannisters attained as a traitor. But Robb Stark is dead. And the Lannisters, we can all agree, my lords, should know treachery well, given how they murdered my mother and sister to reach the throne!”

Muffled shouts and acknowledgements from the eager crowd. 

“If you say you are my man, I have no reason to disbelieve you,” Aegon says. “But if you give me cause to doubt your loyalty, I will show you how a dragon deals with deceit.” He clasps Olyvar Rosby’s hand in his own, and raises it high. “The first among the Crownlands to have joined us, but not the last!”

The court roars back, stomping feet and clapping hands. Olyvar’s hand shakes momentarily in his own, and then stills. Aegon lowers it, giving him another searching look. Those dark eyes meet his, unflinching, and then he lets go. 

What an interesting sort, this new Lord Rosby is. To jump from Baratheon to Stark to Targaryen. If he jumps again, it will be into a noose. 

But Aegon hopes he does not. Jon is always telling him he must his court his followers, that he must fill his Kingsguard and Small Council with those eager and willing to die for him. Olyvar is willing to die. For what, Aegon is not yet sure.


	61. Annoyance (Barbrey & Lysara)

#22 - Barbrey & Lysara

“You wished to see me, Aunt?” 

Barbrey looks up from her desk, eyes narrowed at the guilty party, who does not look in the least bit regretful. 

She had never considered Lysara a rebellious child in the least- children in her position did not have the luxury of willful or defiant behavior, particularly girls who meant to rule the whole of the North upon their sixteenth nameday- but she now considers that perhaps she misjudged just how much Lysara Stark is her mother’s daughter. 

For the past fortnight, it has been like having Nell here again, running wild around Barrowton and racing through the fields with Dana Flint on her heels.

Only, since it is Lysara, on her heels come that lunatic Rickon Stark and several of his all-but-wildling comrades in arms, Mariya Bolton, who they all call Red Masha, belligerent Barba and Robbie Ryswell, who wears his mane of hair as long as his horse’s, the Manderly boys, Aemon Rayder, or whatever they want to call Mance’s boy, Erena Glover, the only one with any sense among them, and Beren Tallhart, who is not even of a lordly house. 

“Yes,” says Barbrey, sourly, “I have a mind to ask you why I am getting reports of a horse race planned for tonight, along the road.”

“Well, we though we ought to spread the word,” Lysara approaches her desk, all wide-eyed innocence, “so that the townspeople know to keep off the street past dusk, lest there be any injuries-,”

Barbrey takes Lysara’s soft hand in her own, and gives the sort of look she last used on her mother, when Nell was fourteen and acting the fool. 

“The only injuries there will be, my sweet girl,” she says, squeezing firmly, “are the ones I inflict on your little band of ruffians with a switch of my choosing if I hear so much as a whisper of hoofbeats going by this keep after dusk.”


	62. Anger (Catelyn & Robert)

#21 - Catelyn/Robert

Catelyn should not say she likes being queen. Rather, she should say she likes being respected as queen. She does not think it is falsely modest of her to assert that she’s never craved power or glory. But respect? Who would not crave respect, man or woman? It is a natural human impulse. 

She thinks Rhaegar respects her. She should hope he does. He does have some regard for her counsel, she can occasionally convince him to take some heed- he has good intentions, he wants what is best for his people, but sometimes she worries his eyes are too fixed on a far off future, that it causes him to neglect the present. 

Ruling is not just about being vindicated by history. Rule is nothing if it has no respect or consideration for the past and present, too. 

All that aside, what she does like about being queen is that woman or not, she is still the superior of near every man in this ballroom, and none dare cross her path as she makes a beeline for her sister. Lysa is close to tears but trying desperately to pass off the flush in her face and the glossiness of her eyes as the result of too much wine. 

She may have had too much wine, too, Catelyn can smell it on her, but she might be more inclined to drink had she a husband as heedless as Robert Baratheon. 

“Where is he,” she says, while covertly signaling for Ravella Smallwood to come over and take Lysa out for some air. 

Lysa points him out. 

Robert is utterly oblivious to Catelyn’s presence, caught up in some ribald story that Brandon Stark is telling, that and the serving girl in his lap, until it is far too late and the queen is before him. 

Catelyn is not a small woman and is aware that with her dark auburn hair unbound and flowing to her waist and clad in Targaryen black and crimson, she cuts an imposing figure, even to a man as big and boisterous as Baratheon. He does not have much of a choice in partnering with her for the next dance, though he looks somewhat put-out about it.

And he does not have much of a choice when she leans back into him as they join by the arms, twirling in a neat circle- he is a good dancer, she will give him that- to say, plainly and coldly, “The next time you show such dishonor to my sister in my own hall, I will see you dragged out of it by the collar like a drunken squire, am I clear, my lord?” 

For emphasis, she squeezes his big hand, hard, and he looks altogether shocked by the strength in her grip. And, she assumes, by the fury in her blue eyes as they lock icily with his own.


	63. On a falling tear (Viserys & Jorah)

#13 - Viserys/Jorah

Jorah finds the boy- it’s difficult to think of Viserys as much else than a boy, though he is two and twenty and has been of age for years now- weeping outside, his head in hands. 

He weeps like a woman, is Jorah’s first thought, and his second is that in the moonlight, undiluted by bonfires or lamps, his silver gold hair gleams like silk. 

Somewhat reluctantly, he sits beside him, waiting for him to collect himself. 

“I want that savage dead,” is Viserys’ first comprehensible statement. It’s not a surprising one, either. 

Jorah thinks he was lucky to escape with his life, but gave up on arguing with drunks years ago. Besides, he’s not entirely sober himself. The Dothraki are not a culture that looks kindly upon abstention. 

“The Khal has as many enemies as he does friends,” Jorah says, careful to keep his voice no higher than a murmur, though they are alone, ignored by the revelers inside. “You may get your wish sooner than you think. Without his leadership, few of them truly wish to cross the sea.”

“I am to be their King, they should be obeying me, not that- that horsefucker and my snivelling sister-,”

Jorah bristles at the insult to the princess, but restrains himself. The boy is drunk and ranting, as is his habit. Let him vent it out now, before he gets himself killed swinging a sword at one of Drogo’s bloodriders. 

Jorah would not mourn him much, but he does worry for Daenerys- Drogo could easily shake off all plans to invade Westeros in the wake of Viserys’ death, preferring to consolidate power here instead. 

And then Jorah will needs spend the next decade watching her grow round with child after child of his. 

To distract himself, he swipes the tears from Viserys’ flushed and blotchy face with the back of his knuckles; the boy flinches back as if struck, then scowls, though he doesn’t protest.


	64. To say goodnight (Sandor/Mira)

#6 - Sandor/Mira

The stable door creaks as it opens, though Sandor does not look up from his hammering. Someone once told him he had hands fit for smithing, and might be he’d have made a decent one had he not been born a Clegane. Their old smith taught him how to shoe a horse when he was ten, and the last time Randon tried to shoe Stranger he narrowly evaded a kick to the face. 

Sandor had to swear to never ask him again, or he’d have quit then and there. Smiths are always in supply, make good wages, and can more or less name their conditions, within reason, with most lords, nevermind landed knights.

Mira keeps her distance; she’s still nervous around Stranger, though Sandor has taken her riding on him thrice now. The entire time she kept her eyes shut and her head down, as if expecting to be thrown off at any moment. 

He shouldn’t have laughed, but he couldn’t help it, and the more he laughed the more fretful she became until she elbowed him solidly in the ribs and he couldn’t laugh anymore, it hurt too much.

“I’m almost done,” he says; he’s on the last hoof, but he doesn’t dare move, because as much as Stranger trusts him, he’s still a horse, and they’re all skittish fools, from the finest destrier to the lowliest plowhorse. “I’ll be in soon.” 

She always claims she doesn’t like to sleep alone, and he was in disbelief that anyone would willingly want to share a bed with him until very recently. 

It still makes him uneasy, that she always falls asleep first, so assured that he’s no threat to her. 

He hears her yawn. “Why do you always do it at night?”

“He’s calmer at night.” As if to demonstrate this, he gently strokes Stranger’s warm foreleg. “Less noise and clamor. Or people bursting into the stables.”

“Are you trying to tell me something?” she asks dryly, and he snorts without looking up. 

To his surprise, she does draw closer, until she is right behind him.

“You can give him a pat,” Sandor says. “He won’t bite.”

Mira gives him a pat instead, on the head, and he closes his eyes for a moment at the feeling of her fingertips rubbing down his scalp. “Goodnight,” she says, then; “Goodnight, Stranger.” 

Stranger whinnies, to both of their surprise, and Mira lets out a nervous chuckle before skirting outside.


	65. After a nightmare (Jaime/Berena)

#16 - Jaime/Berena

At some point she really does not know what to do, since whispering his name is not working, so Berena takes him firmly by the shoulders and gives him a good hard shaking, until his trembling and faint cries cease at once and his eyes snap open. 

He all but shoves her off him; she only avoids falling out of the bed by grabbing onto the headboard, only to eye him reproachfully as he sits upright in bed, panting, and then downs what must be half a pitcher of water from the bedside table like he’d just come in from the training yard.

Only then, after wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, does he look at her. “I told you to leave me be when I sleep,” he snaps. She supposes she should have expected his usual level of petty spite, even when she was trying to do him a favor. 

“Oh, you must forgive me,” she hisses back, laying a hand on her heart in mock sorrow. “Have I offended my lord terribly by daring to wake him from a nightmare?”

“I wasn’t having a nightmare!” he retorts, like a child. 

“Was it a very pleasant dream, then, of you and the Mad King cavorting through a field of wildflowers?” she scoffs. 

He hits her with a pillow; she splutters, then picks hers up and heaves it at him with a furious grunt, all but throwing herself on top of him in an attempt to wrestle him into submission.

This fails, miserably, and ends with her flat on her back, both pillows on the floor, and the sheets a tangled mess around them. 

“Go to bed,” he finally says, trying to take a more mature tact, as if she were the one who’d woken him by whimpering like a kicked dog. 

Berena resists the urge to mouth something offensive back at him, and returns to her previous position, rolling away from him furiously and glaring at the wall. 

She half-expects him to get up and leave the room- good, he can bunk down with his brother if he wants to act like such a fool- but instead he settles back down, still breathing hard, beside her.


	66. Comfort (Joanna/Minisa)

#9 - Joanna/Minisa

Minisa has been a widow for many years when Lady Lannister comes to call with her eldest son as a potential suitor for either of her daughters, but Joanna has only been a widow for one and a half. 

Neither of them still wear mourning black, though Minisa has kept her long red gold hair confined to two widow’s knots at the nape of her neck for some time now, and Joanna’s dress is far more lavish but subdued in coloring, a muted version of her son’s dashing scarlets and sunny golds. 

In truth, Minisa thinks Jaime passing interested in her Cat and enchanted by her dear Brynden, who has been like a father to her son and daughters since Hoster died, but she is far less preoccupied with the awkward conversation shared between their adolescent children than she is with the Lady Joanna herself. 

Her beauty is compelling, like sunlight, one feels drawn to it almost by nature, but in her grief it is something like a clouded sun, Minisa thinks, and she regrets that she never had the chance to know her in her full, radiant splendor. 

But then, if Joanna were still married to a man as notoriously proud and possessive of his family as Tywin Lannister, then Minisa might not be able to sit beside the lady in the godswood, and in the midst of their quiet conversation and needlework, take Joanna’s hands in hers. 

They are very soft and very warm, and near the same size as Minisa’s; they are both tall, slender woman with naturally long and tapering fingers. 

“It feels like a boulder on your chest now,” she says, “but I promise you, in time the load does lighten. When Hoster passed I felt as though I were stumbling down a dark corridor with no ended. But it does end, or at least widen out, and there are windows and doors to be found. I promise you that, my lady.”

Joanna Lannister looks at her searchingly, as if trying to discern some hidden motive or manipulation on Minisa’s part, then finally gives a stiff nod, her hands relaxing some in Minisa’s grip. 

“I would welcome,” she says, after a moment, “a lantern to light the way, if you would share one with me.”


	67. After an argument (Lyanna/Cersei)

#17 - Cersei/Lyanna

“How many times must I tell you?” the Stark girl rages, looking as though she wants to rip a branch from a tree and bludgeon Cersei half to death with it, “that I did not want that silly crown!”

Cersei flares, rigid with fury. “Silly crown?” she spits. “Silly- you are such a stupid, hopeless child! It is not a silly crown when the prince is bestowing it upon the woman whose affections he wishes to secure! It is not silly to be so openly courted by the heir to the throne!”

 _It should have been me_ , she thinks, despite the brief flare of guilt when she recalls the obvious distress in Lyanna’s wide grey eyes at that moment. _I am the most beautiful woman here. In the world, really. If he was going to forsake his wife, it should have been for me. I can do anything for him. I would. I would give him as many sons and daughters as he wants, and coin aplenty to hire swords to dispose his father with, or poison so the old, mad man dies in his sleep._

_It should have been me, not you. You do not belong to him, you belong to me._

“He was not courting me, he has never courted me-,”

“Only because you are too much of a little fool to recognize it!”

“Call me a fool again,” Lyanna Stark snarls, “and I will hit you.”

“Raise a hand to me,” Cersei sneers back at her, “and I will have my brother cut it off.”

“I should like to see him try! Brandon would crush him!”

“Brandon,” Cersei pronounces the name as she would have a filthy curse, lips curled, “is a moron waving about a stick, just like your imbecile of a betrothed-,”

“My brother is not a moron! Why must you be such- such a-,”

“Such a what?” Cersei mocks. “Go on. Tell me how you truly feel-,”

Lyanna smacks her. It’s not even a proper slap, barely that, glancing off Cersei’s chin, and for an instant she sees red and all she can think of is wrestling Lyanna Stark to the ground and shoveling dirt into her belligerent mouth until she chokes on it and dies, but then it passes. 

It passes, and she sees the tears in Lyanna’s eyes, and though she meant to never forgive her for this, ever, her body doesn’t listen to her brain, and she finds herself holding her instead. 

“I didn’t want it,” Lyanna says hoarsely, wrapping her arms so tight around Cersei’s middle that Cersei fears she might crack a rib; she’s stronger than she looks, this she-wolf. “I promise you, I did not-,”

“Very well, I believe you,” Cersei says, uncomfortable, as much as was the last time Jaime seemed close to tears in front of her. “Now stop it, you’re wrinkling my gown.”

Lyanna reluctantly lets go of her, but not before touching her cheek, gently. “I’m sorry.”

You should be, Cersei thinks, but finds herself saying, instead, “I’m sorry too.”


	68. After a nightmare (Stannis/Davos)

#16 - Stannis/Davos

Davos has never slept in such a comfortable bed before. It is so soft that he can’t fall asleep, though he’s exhausted, so he keeps his half-lidded gazed trained on the bedcurtains, wondering how much they might sell for. 

Then he wonders how the lordling beside him would react if he knew that Davos was pricing out his private bedchamber. 

In sleep, Stannis looks younger than his nineteen years, his face smoothed and unlined with anger or worry. He’s cleanshaven; Davos resists the urge to run a finger over the scarce amount of stubble left behind, far less than on his own chin, from his own blunt razor. 

While he is studying him, Stannis’ peaceful expression suddenly contorts, eyelids twitching, and Davos blinks in shock, then wastes no time in shaking him awake when he begins to murmur in his sleep. Stannis sits bolt upright in bed beside him with a muffled gasp, then rips his arm out of Davos’ hands as if branded by the touch, turning away from him, shoulders hunched together. 

Davos stays where he is, wary. They’ve shared a bed for less than a week. His fingers are still bandaged stumps. He knows most of the household thinks him no more than a mercenary smuggler- which he is- but he’s never been blind to dangerous waters. If Stannis decides he’s offended or displeased him, he could find himself sleeping in a dungeon cell for the foreseeable future. 

Still, he does not think Stannis Baratheon so cruel or vindictive to punish a… a bedmate in such a way. More likely he’d simply send Davos from Storm’s End, tell him to collect his wife and children and make for the Rainwood with haste. 

After a few moments, Stannis turns back to him, throat bobbing as he swallows a hasty sip of water. “Sometimes,” he says, stiltedly, “I dream the siege never ended. And there is still shoe leather in my mouth.”

Davos inclines his head; there’s no need for words, and draws Stannis back down onto the warm mattress with him, listening to his breathing slow, and feeling the heat pass between their hands, linked under the sheet.


	69. Encouragement (Daella/Rymond)

#11 - Daella/Rymond

Daella is supposed to be waiting for her new suitor- no, not a suitor, she corrects herself, brow furrowed. 

He’s not a suitor because a suitor means it’s not decided yet. He is her betrothed because Mother and Father decided it. Well, mostly Mother. 

Father said he did not care who she wed so long as she wed and was out from under their feet. 

Daella does not know what that means, she has not crawled since she was a little babe. She did not speak until she was nearly two, as everyone keeps reminding her, but she walked well before then. 

She thinks she is a good walker; she’s not clumsy, she never trips or stumbles over her own feet. Even if she is not a very good dancer unless it is with Mother or Maegelle leading her. She always forgets the order of steps and the more people snicker or scold, the more she forgets until her head is pounding and her ears are rushing like seashells. 

But maybe it’s for the best that she is seated. Mother told her to stay here, so she will stay here and wait, as nervous as she is. 

To make herself less nervous, Daella folds and unfolds her hands over her skirt, miming one of the clapping games she grew up seeing Saera and Viserra play together. They never let her join in, because she is too stupid to keep up with it. 

Daella does not feel stupid, only her family is full of very clever people, or at least everyone says they are very clever and wise, and while her younger sisters would say ‘stupid’, Father would say ‘simple’ in a tone that really, she thinks, means ‘stupid’, even if he is trying to smile at her and be nice while he says it. 

But she doesn’t feel stupid, if only because she’s never felt like anything else, and it’s not- it’s not that she’s not good at anything, she thinks, miserably. She is good at some things. 

She… she is good at helping flowers grow, and she is good at singing when she makes up the songs herself, so that she can remember the lyrics. She is good at weaving, once she gets into the rhythm of it and isn’t distracted, and her needlework is passable. 

A door opens somewhere, and she flattens her hands against her skirt before clasping them. One of her septas once threatened to take a belt to her knuckles if she did not stop fidgeting, but that just make Daella tremble so violently in fear that it really did not matter. 

She keeps her gaze steadily trained on her skirts. Saera once told her, in a voice pretending to be sweet but really quite nasty, that she ‘was almost pretty until you looked her in the eyes and saw what a dullard she was’. 

Daella knows Maegelle is right when she says Saera only says these things to be cruel, but she cannot help it. She doesn’t like to look people in the eyes, ever. It feels like being naked in public. Or what that might be like, she doesn’t know.

“Daella,” Mother says, gently. 

Daella looks up. Mother is there with a boy she vaguely recognizes as one of old Lord Rodrik’s sons. 

A few months past there was a big argument between Mother and Father and Maegelle about Lord Rodrik, and now his son is here. Lord Rodrik is of an age with Mother and Father, but his son is around Daella’s age, sixteen or seventeen, she thinks. 

He’s short, like his father, but she does not mind. Men who tower over her frighten her. 

Daella jumps to her feet, hands still clasped together, and awkwardly curtsies just as the Arryn boy bows at the waist. 

They both look back up at each other, flustered, but Mother looks a little relieved, some of the worry draining from her face. “Daella,” she says, “may I introduce Ser Rymond Arryn, heir to the Vale.”

“Good day, Princess,” Rymond says. He has a very soft and quiet voice, although maybe he is just nervous.

Daella swallows, and comes a little closer to him and her mother. “Well met, Ser.” 

She hopes her voice doesn’t squeak too much. It’s very high and Vaegon once told her it sounded like nails on a chalkboard and would drive any man to drink, if he wasn’t already driven by how stupid and slow she was. 

But Ser Rymond smiles, and extends his hand to her to help her down a step from the dais she was seated on. Daella is not used to anyone but Mother or Maegelle extending a hand, especially not boys or men. Usually they grab at her instead, laughing and snickering, like Simon Staunton or Ellard Crane. 

With a small, tentative smile, she takes it.


	70. Promise (Daenerys/Aurane)

#4 - Aurane/Daenerys

Daenerys has had enough of men’s promises, visions, and prophecies for her future by the time she reaches Dragonstone, but she is not going to dismiss ten three-decked dromonds, either, even if Drogon could make quick kindling of them. 

She trusts the Lord of the Waters, as he is calling himself, also understands this, though his smile refuses to flicker or fade despite the distant cries of her hungry dragons outside, waiting for their evening meal. They are spoiled, and game is sparse on this barren island. 

“Which shall I take first in your name, Your Grace?” he asks, brushing an errant lock of silver gold hair from his thin face. 

He is handsome, but in appearance he reminds her so much of Viserys, save for his grey-green eyes and beard, that she is more unsettled by his Valyrian looks than she is pleased or flattered. “Driftmark or Claw Isle?”

“Neither,” Dany says, crisply, adjusting her position on the carved obsidian throne. It’s very uncomfortable. 

She tells herself this is simply preparation for her next seat. A queen’s duties should never be comfortable or taken lightly. 

“I will not permit you to sack and reave those who should- who will be among my first and foremost supporters. I will treat with Lord Velaryon and Lord Celtigar personally. You will take your dromonds into the Blackwater and trouble the Golden Company’s fleet with them. Draw them out as much as you can, far from the city. But do not allow yourself to be cornered. I will not come to save you if you act like a fool,” she warns.

She can tell he is disappointed and perhaps even resentful, but does not dare show it. 

He goes from his one knee to up on his feet. “May I approach Her Grace to thank her for this mission? I shall undertake it with every caution and cunning you would advise.” He draws out the word ‘cunning’ a little too long for her liking, but she waves him forward. 

Aurane Waters’ gloves are very soft, likely kid leather. Dany mislikes the feeling of them against her skin. 

She no longer trusts softness, nor smoothness. She trusts in those who came from Meereen with her, her most loyal, her most trusted, and she trusts in herself and her dragons. Nothing else. No one else. 

Once she would have been reduced to a blushing, flustered little girl by his coy compliments and charming smiles. Now she removes her hand from him, smiling stiffly, and sends him on his way. 

Drogon screams again outside. Perhaps she can fit in one final flight around the island before nightfall. The fresh air would do her some good. This hall smells of things long gone cold and dead.


	71. Happiness (Catelyn & Osha)

#3 - Catelyn & Osha

The first thing she hears is the patter of paws on smooth flooring, and Catelyn instinctively draws back a step as a hulking black wolf comes into view. 

The last time she saw Shaggydog he was little more than a pup, the size of a sheepdog, no larger, running after Rickon through Winterfell’s green godswood. Now he is at least as large as a pony, dwarfing the boy and woman beside him. 

The boy beside him. It has been two years. Children change so much, and it is so easy to forget. 

The Rickon she recalls was little more than a toddler, still a baby, really, stumbling over his words and content to cling to her while she read him stories in bed, his head nuzzled against her chest. 

Now he looks a proper child; a tall and skinny five year old, though she recognizes the dimples in his cheeks. His hair falls long and curly, past his shoulders, a mop of copper locks, always the lightest in coloring of all her children’s, similar in shade to Sansa’s. It reminds her of Edmure as a little boy. 

Or Robb, though his hair was never so long. Robb, who is now fighting to reclaim the North from the Boltons and Ironborn, while she and the pregnant Jeyne seek refuge from the war and coming winter with the Manderlys. 

“Rickon?” she calls to him hoarsely, her gaze falling over the woman beside him, tall and lean and weathered by the elements, her lank brown hair contained to a rough braid. 

Slowly, he approaches, Shaggydog whining, and then she has caught him up in her arms. Rickon stiffens, but does not resist as Catelyn kisses him, breathes in his smell, what used to be so familiar to her, now strange and foreign. She squeezes him tight, then worries she is overwhelming and frightening him- how much of her does he remember?- and reluctantly lets go. 

He shies away, skittish, though she thinks- hopes- there is a glimmer of recognition in his light blue eyes, almost grey in this light. The woman with him helps her back to her feet with a strong but sure grip. 

“I’m Osha,” she says. “I’ve been taking care of your boy while you were gone, Lady Stark.”

Catelyn could kiss her too, for keeping something so precious safe. “Osha,” she repeats, squeezing the tall woman’s calloused hand. “Thank you.”


	72. Comfort (Arianne/Viserys)

#9 - Arianne/Viserys

Arianne is not sure how much she likes Tyrosh. It is dark and brooding, a fortress city on a warm and windtossed island north of the Stepstones. 

To be sure, despite the black walls and dark buildings, the people are colorful and exuberant, dying their hair all sorts of vivid colors, wearing the most elaborately constructed clothes, a hat or headdress for every occasion. They even paint their nails. The only thing they will not touch is their skin; tattoos are reserved for the slaves.

There are so many slaves. Arianne was brought up in the light of the Seven, who hold slavery as an abomination. Her mother is a Norvoshi, she was raised in a household full of slaves, and Arianne has heard all sorts of frightful and fascinating stories, but that is one thing. To be surrounded by them is another. 

Her father told her that the Archon treated his slaves well, but she will never be used to seeing people, even the smallest of children, go collared and branded.

One of the slaves assigned to her brings her to meet the prince for the first time. Unlike Arianne, the prince seems used to dealing with slaves, and wastes no time in dismissing the girl, who bows her head and leaves at once. They are alone. 

He can be no older than her, ten, though he is several inches taller. She can tell he is nervous, though she is the newcomer, by how stiff his posture is and the way he stands with his hands clasped behind his back. Despite the somewhat haughty look on his face, she can see the wariness in his pale eyes. 

Arianne is nervous too. She is nervous she will never go home again, and that her father will have her make her living in exile, wife to a Targaryen on the run, that the promised days of a Targaryen king and a Martell queen will never come again. 

She misses Sunspear and the Water Gardens and her cousins. She misses her mother, and she even misses baby Trystane. She might miss Quentyn, had she ever gotten the chance to know him. Prince Viserys has a little sister, though she’s no more than a toddling babe. Daenerys, that is her name. 

She reaches out her hand, and takes his, tentatively. “I am very pleased to meet you, my prince,” Arianne says politely, hoping her smile is more charming than awkward. 

If anything, he seems happy she addressed him as such, and straightens a little, losing some of his shyness. 

“Not a prince,” he corrects her. “King. My mother crowned me on Dragonstone. Once I have my armies, we will go there and be married, before I take back my father’s throne.”

She can tell he wishes to believe that very much, from the fervency in his shaky tone.


	73. Protect (Lysara & Rickon)

#8 - Lysara & Rickon

Lysara is seven years old when her uncle saves her life. 

They are out on a hunt deep in the kingswood; she, her uncle Rickon, who is really more like a cousin, or an older brother, he is only five years older, and Harry and Lord Hornwood and several others, and she does not see the shadowcat lurking between the trees until it is far too late. 

Her filly almost throws her, but Lysara keeps a good hold of her reins and her seat in the saddle. 

Still, there is nothing she can do about the lunging shadowcat, determined to rip from the horse, nothing anyone can do, all of them taken by surprise, save Rickon, whose first arrow takes it in the side, his second in the throat. 

The cat lands in the spring snow, bleeding out and hissing and snarling, emaciated and starving after what must have been an excruciating winter. 

Lysara is too stunned and shocked to do much but stare, at least until she gathers herself enough to hop down from the saddle and run to Rickon, embracing him. 

He does not lower his bow until he’s sure the cat is dead, then ruffles her hair with a slightly shaky grin. “Wasn’t going to let you become dinner, was I?”

Harry looks white as a ghost. “Thank the gods you did not,” he says, hoarsely, running a hand through his beard, “or your goodsister would have had me for a second course in that meal, Rickon.”

“I want you to teach me how to shoot,” Lysara tells him, still hanging onto her uncle.

Rickon snorts. “Ask your mother. She’s the one who first taught me.”


	74. Relief (Stannis & Berena)

#2 - Berena & Stannis

Stannis does not think much of his goodsister the Queen. That is, he thinks of her with the respect she is due, but he does not like the woman, and sees no reason to pretend to. Their interactions are limited enough to feasts and holidays. 

She made some fuss after the birth of Steffon in regards to being permitted to sit on Small Council meetings, but Robert put a quick end to that, to Stannis’ relief, though he suspects it mostly had to do with Robert’s pride, not a regard for the proper order of things. 

Women have no place in such settings and he cannot think of many women more ill-suited to such a sober environment than Berena Stark, who has been from her first day to her last an impulsive, giggly, flippant creature, he is certain of it. 

In her one defense, he will say that he has never quite felt that she was deliberately mocking him, but he mislikes his easy smiles. Her eyes rarely smile at the same time as her mouth, and when she calls him ‘brother’ she does so with a breezy lightness that feels more teasing than respectful. 

Stannis has never liked being teased, whether it was well-intended or not. He has especially never liked being teased by a woman, though he understands it is in their nature to tend towards irreverence and frivolity. 

“I want to see her,” Renly is really being insufferable, he thinks, wondering where the damned nursemaid is. 

Stannis is a grown man, married himself (though the less that is said of his own match, the better) and he has better things to do than be forced to look after his whinging younger brother, but Renly will not let go of him. 

“You will not,” he says, sharply. “Her Grace is in labor. You should be at your studies or at prayer.”

“You don’t pray,” Renly accuses. 

Stannis bristles. “I am a man grown and can make my own choices in worship. You are a child who should obey your elders.”

Nevertheless, when word arrives that the Queen has been delivered of a healthy second son, Stannis finds himself reluctantly following Renly into the room. 

His brother dashes over to see his squalling new nephew, leaving Stannis to stand there awkwardly before approaching Berena, who is sitting up in bed, thankfully covered with her robe. 

“Goodsister,” Stannis says. “Congratulations.” He wants nothing more than to be out of this room; he is shocked when she takes his hand; her grip is clammy and weak, she must be more exhausted than she is willing to let on. 

“Thank you for coming to see me, goodbrother,” she says, and he realizes after a moment that she has ignorantly assumed it was his idea to bring in Renly to see the child. 

Her eyes are pale and glassy, her voice hoarse and raw, from screaming, he assumes.

Stannis has every right to remove his hand from hers, but a queer stab of guilt keeps it in her grip.


	75. Protect (Catelyn/Lysa)

#8 - Petra/Cat

Petra is quickly running out of ways to tell Jonos Bracken that if he doesn’t remove his hands from her waist, she is going to pick up a knife from this table and drive it into the meat of his thigh. 

Of course, she is not actually going to do that, she is the only child of a petty lord considered barely above the common folk, she is never going to be able to stick a knife in the Bracken heir and expect to walk away from it with that hand still attached to her body. 

But she finds thinking of it helps to calm her, when she really wants to scream and spit in his leering face. 

Fortunately, she does not have to; she smells Catelyn’s lavender perfume before she sees her, and then she hears her voice, crisp and clear as a mountain stream; “Petra, there you are, I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Jonos, if you’d excuse us, Lady Petra and I have some business we must attend to, I am sure you understand.” 

Polite as her phrasing is, her tone is cold as winter’s breath, and Jonos Bracken is bold, but not stupid enough to openly disrespect Hoster Tully’s favorite child in his hall. 

He lets go of Petra who quickly steps away from him, adamant on keeping her face still and composed, even as she smooths down her bodice and skirts, again and again, as if to rid herself of his touch. Catelyn wraps a sisterly arm around her shoulders. Petra wishes, not for the first or last time, that it was anything but, and comforts herself by training her gaze on the smooth, pale pink skin of Catelyn’s swan-like neck, and how it contrasts so pleasingly with the rich auburn of her hair. 

Petra’s hair is a mousy brown, lank and limp. She will never be a great beauty, cannot hope to win a rich and powerful husband with her looks. 

The only thing striking about her is her eye color, a pleasant shade of grey-green, and her grace; she is small and dainty and an excellent dancer. 

“The next time he lays hands on you like that,” Catelyn says in her ear, “you tell me, and I will have Uncle Brynden put him in a sack in the river.”

Petra snorts with laughter; it’s very unflattering but she can’t help it, when she’s around Cat sometimes she forgets all her little games meant to keep her head above water, and just has to smile and laugh like they were children again.


	76. Anger (Barbrey & Donella)

#21 - Nell and Barbrey

The first time Barbrey combs through her niece’s hair, it is three days into their journey from the Dreadfort to Barrowton, Roose having given his blessing- if you can call it that- for Barbrey to take the child into her household for the time being. 

Barbrey felt it best to leave before he could change his mind. It is what Bethany would have wanted, her daughter away from that place, and Barbrey intends to uphold it now, even if she has never liked children, even if she is only doing this because of her love for her sister. 

She scarcely knows Donella; a few visits between sisters has not a close relationship made.

What she does know about the girl is that she is a terror when her hair is being combed, fidgeting and snapping and hissing in pain as if Barbrey were prodding her with a hot poker. 

“Sit still,” Barbrey scolds for the hundredth time, working on a particularly bad knot. “How can this be so tangled? What did you do, roll around on the ground after your bath?”

“It just is!” Donella snaps back at her, then cries out and swats Barbrey, hard, across the arm. “That hurts!”

No one has dared swat Barbrey since she was a child herself, and her temper sparks; she turns over the comb in her hand and brings it down, hard, on the small of her niece’s back. 

Nell gasps in pain, then bursts into tears, shoulders slumping. 

Barbrey feels a crush of guilt in her throat, though had she ever struck her own mother she would have had such a thrashing she would not be able to sit for the rest of the day. 

She sets down the comb and pulls Donella too her, murmuring apologies into her tangled hair, blinking back her own hot tears.


	77. Relief (Edmure/Roslin)

#2 - Edmure/Roslin

In the end, there is no one to stop her. So many of her brothers, uncles, and cousins are dead that it is pointless. 

Roslin binds her infant daughter to her chest, is helped onto her horse by Serra and Sarra, and waves goodbye to the kin she has left to care for, and is on her way with a small group of loyal guards. They do not go in Frey colors for fear of being caught out on the road; they say the Brotherhood is in disarray since Stoneheart’s death, but there are still plenty of bandits and ragged men roaming about. 

Mercifully, the weather holds during their travel south, as does the babe’s health; Roslin knows she is taking a great risk, but the greater risk, in her eyes, would be to stay at the Twins a moment longer, knowing Edmure is alive and parted from her. 

Riverrun still flies the Tully and Stark banners, and the rains have washed away the recent signs of massacres. Corpses still litter the banks of the river and the moat, however. Roslin tries not to look at or smell them, even as she calls out to the men manning the gates. 

That does not go very far, however, until she sees a familiar figure on the walls, who then exclaims in shock. 

The gates open, and no sooner has Roslin struggled out of the saddle, bone-weary, exhausted, and soaked to the skin, then Edmure has taken her up into his arms, kissing her soundly. 

She is so relieved she bursts into tears, and when he lays his hand on their daughter’s head, she can tell he is close to crying himself.

“What is her name, Roslin?” he asks, hoarsely.

“I thought Catelyn, for your sister,” she whispers, and kisses him again as he mouths it, expression crumpling into a mixture of joy and grief all over again.


	78. Protect (Jonelle/Daenerys)

#8 - Jonelle/Daenerys

Jonelle saves her life the first time she sees her, which is to say that she screams out just in time for Daenerys Targaryen, seated on Drogon but no longer in the air, to flatten herself against the saddle, narrowly avoiding a scorpion bolt from one of Jon Connington’s siege machines. 

Shortly thereafter, things are aflame, and in the screaming, teeming chaos Jonelle is only conscious of her dragon, cradled against her chest- Ghostling is no larger than a big reddish grey cat, he can fly no more than six or so feet in the air, and she has to protect him, she must- she trips over something, or is pushed, and falls, choking on the thick smoke. 

Someone steps on her legs, then another, and she’s certain she’s about to be trampled in the crowd crush, until a roar vibrates through the air so loudly she can’t hear for a few moments after it, but can feel herself being hauled back up on her feet, scrabbling for purchase onto leathery, warm scales, far smoother than she expected, as smooth as Ghostling’s baby scales, and then she is, as absurd and terrifying as it sounds, behind her- her niece in the saddle. 

“Hold on,” Daenerys snaps at her, so Jonelle loops her free arm around her waist- Ghostling is now screeching as if in delight- and the courtyard falls away behind them, the Red Keep’s walls seem small and flimsy, and they are in the air.

Jonelle is speechless for a little while longer, until she manages to shout over the rushing wind in her face and mouth, “Where are we going?”

“The Dragonpit,” the girl- woman- queen- whatever she is, shouts back. Her silver gold hair is coming loose from its thin plait, flying into Jonelle’s stunned face. 

Above the clouds of smoke and ash, the sky is a beautiful shade of blue, like a robin’s egg. 

Jonelle begins to weep, although she’s not sure why, not sure at all. 

She can feel Daenerys’ heartbeat, she feels, and her own, and even the massive dragon beneath them, like the pounding of a drum or waves crashing against the shore.


	79. Comfort (Elia & Stannis)

#9 - Elia/Stannis

Elia’s mother had meant for them to have a tour up the west coast first, in her ceaseless hunt for suitable spouses for her two youngest children, but then Lady Joanna died in the childbed and the Lannisters suddenly seemed far less inclined to welcome visitors, and there was an outbreak of a pox in Oldtown. 

Mother did not wish to risk it, so instead they visit Ghost Hill, to see about fiery redheaded Nymella Toland for Oberyn, then the Tor to visit plump and shy Trebor Jordayne for Elia. After that Yronwood, for fair-haired and demure Ynys, who could not be more ill-suited to Elia’s wild brother, then Wyl, Stonehelm, Crow’s Nest…

By the time they reach Storm’s End Elia is exhausted from all the travel and endless parade of new faces and scenery, and is grateful for the reprieve. 

Storm’s End could not be more different from Sunspear, and it is racked by high winds and torrential rains during their week’s visit, but Mother seems to get along well with boisterous Lord Steffon and his slightly more reserved wife, Lady Cassana, and Oberyn amuses himself by alternatively goading and flattering the Baratheons’ spoilt eldest son, Robert, a stocky, tall lad of ten. 

Elia is more fond of the younger boy, Stannis, who she passes many peaceable hours with in the castle’s library. 

He gives off the impression of a child who is not often consulted for his opinion or desires, but his speech grows less halting and awkward, she notices, the longer he spends apart from his braggart of a brother, who seems to delight in mocking and embarrassing Stannis in front of company. 

“This is where I like to read,” Stannis says, showing her a tucked away nook of the dusty and cluttered library, flanked by stolen cushions from other rooms. “Robert never comes in here.” His tone implies that he doesn’t think Robert ever will. “He says only a craven would spend more time with his nose in the book than in the training yard.” 

More defensively, “I train just as hard as him.”

“I think it is a mark of maturity to be so well-rounded at such a young age,” Elia tells him, patting his skinny arm. 

He glances up at her, beet red, and she can’t help but smile at his wide-eyed stare. 

“All of us have our talents, do we not? I may never be the finest dancer- I run out of breath so quick. But my brothers do declare my poetry to be very entertaining, on rainy nights indoors.” 

Stannis’ small smile is gone as quick as it appears, but was present nonetheless. She feels oddly proud to have coaxed one out of the poor solemn child.


	80. After a tough day (Arya & Harrion)

#15 - Arya & Harrion

Harry sometimes forgets how time has changed the both of them, when Arya comes storming into his solar the same way she might have as a little girl of eleven or twelve. 

It is easy to forget and let the years meld her features back into that indignant child, at least for a moment, until he hears her voice, very much no longer a child’s, and is forced to contend with the reality that his goodsister is seventeen, a little girl no longer, and has very different concerns from when she was one. 

She looks so much like his sister when she is annoyed that it astounds him, though Alys’ hair is slightly darker in color and wavier in texture, her nose longer and her eyes more blue than grey. 

“I’ve had enough,” Arya snaps, ripping off her riding gloves and tossing them down, along with her hat, then proceeding to pace back and forth hard enough to wear a hole in the floorboards. “I can’t take another moment of those imbeciles. If they don’t leave me be I am going to give them each a new hole to prattle out of!”

By ‘those imbeciles’, Harry has to assume she is referring to her rather large consortium of potential suitors. Sansa has been wed for years now, Lysara is still just a child of seven. Arya is by and large considered the most eligible maiden in the north, both for her Stark pedigree and her beauty. 

He reluctantly stands up, bracing himself. “Do I needs evict any of them from this castle? You know your mother will have their heads if there is even so much as a whisper of impropriety-,”

“I wish they would be improper! Anything is better than this mummer’s show of false compliments and preening!” Arya snaps, glaring at him as he comes from around the desk. 

He gives her a pat on the shoulder, which she does not jerk away from. 

“They’ve overeager boys,” Harry says, in what he hopes is a tone that is more understanding than dismissive. “And you make them nervous, so they act like fools. If you find it overwhelming, I am sure Nell would be happy to separate the wheat from the chaff-,”

“No, thank you, I am very well capable of choosing my own husband, if I choose one at all!” Arya threatens, not for the first or last time. 

Still, she seems to have calmed slightly. “I just wish they wouldn’t act so… obnoxious. I don’t appreciate being fought over like dogs fight over a bone.”

“Mayhaps you should begin by challenging them each to a duel, to narrow things down a bit,” Harry suggests in jest, then blanches at the thoughtful look on her face. 

“Arya. Arya! That was a jape, do not- Arya, come back here at once- Arya!”


	81. Sadness (Tom Sr/Merope)

#23 - Merope/Tom Sr.

“A baby,” he says, eyes wide with wonder, his hands on her belly. 

Merope allows herself to relish the sensation just a little while longer. In the morning she will begin to wean him off the Amortentia. In the morning she will, truly. 

She knows he loves her now, she knows he does, he must, he has to. She’s shown him how easy she is to love. 

He couldn’t see it before, couldn’t look past her deranged, impoverished family and her plain looks and stammering speech but now he must, he must.

“Yes,” she whispers. “A little boy or girl. Isn’t that wonderful, Tommy?” There are tears in her eyes and in her throat. 

Impulsively, she throws her skinny arms around him, drinking in his scent, the solid weight of his tall frame. He’ll stay. Of course he’ll stay. He won’t leave her, not like Mother did. 

He’ll stay and they’ll have this baby, together, and she- she will apologize for everything and he will forgive her for what she’s done, and it will be alright. It must. 

She deserves that much. It must be alright. This is her fairy tale. Her happy ending. She can’t go back to the way she was before, so lonely and beaten down and miserable. She can’t.

“I love you,” she whispers, before releasing him. The look in his dark eyes has a glassy, almost pearlescent sheen to it, like those of a porcelain doll’s. 

Her belly twists uncomfortably, but she tells herself it’s just the baby moving about. She’s not an evil person. She isn’t. This was the only way. 

She’s a good person, she wants to be good, she’ll show him- he can help her. He can help her, once he’s better, once she’s made him better again. 

“I love you,” he echoes her, and she closes her eyes. It’s easier to pretend when she’s just listening to his voice. “I love you, Merope.”


	82. Annoyance (Aegon & Donella)

#22 - Nell & Young Griff

The last time Nell dined with any king, it was with Robb, so she thinks she might be forgiven for not going into this evening with grand expectations. Robb was her husband before he was her king, for however short a span of time. 

Aegon Targaryen is most certainly not her husband, thank the gods, nor is he her king, though that is rather the point of this dinner. 

He is taking the plunge of paying reluctant homage to Robb Stark’s grieving widow, and hoping to come out it with some grand declaration of support- that House Stark, who had every reason to curse the Targaryens’ from top to tail during the last war, will now quite abruptly change their tune on that front, in exchange for thousands of men shipped up from the south to defend them against the Others.

Nell is proud, but she’s not stupid. They need the men and she has no grandiose moral disgust with the idea of this boy sitting the Iron Throne, whether he is Rhaegar’s son or not. 

She, of all people, has very little room with which to be judging others by the sins of their family members. 

If she needs go down in history as a villain, smothering the North’s furtive dreams of independence in order to save the North itself, she will gladly do so, so long as it does not mean an uprising several years down the line come spring, one which ends with her head on a spike and her daughter mysteriously disappeared or married off. 

However, she is rapidly losing patience with His Grace, Aegon VI Targaryen, not because of his blood or his very, very brief experience as a ruler thus far, but because the boy simply… refuses… to… get… to… the… point. Whoever taught him how to flatter and charm did their job very well, but gods be good, she has no patience left. 

She might have been a little won over despite her haughtiness, had she still been an impetuous young maid, but she is not a maid, she is a mother and a woman grown, and while she is aware she is an attractive woman, she is not nearly striking enough that Aegon Targaryen should be sitting here praising her grace, character, and modest widow’s appearance for this long. He is stalling. 

When she leans over and takes his hand in hers, he stiffens in surprise, then moves forward in his seat eagerly, and for the first time she realizes that is not all acting; he seems genuinely intrigued, by her refusal to give in to his sweet talking or by the fact that she was dawdling her baby daughter on one knee, a ceremonial sword sheathed across the other when he came into her hall. 

“Your Grace,” Nell says, with a slow, smooth, secretive sort of smile she suspects she inherited from her father, though it has her mother’s teeth to it. “I am sure you are familiar with the concessions given to Dorne during the time of Daeron the Good.”

He looks more perplexed than anything else. “I am, my lady. I was tutored in the history of all seven kingdoms from a young age.”

“Excellent,” says Nell, “then you should have the groundwork all laid out already, for I have quite a lot to discuss about the collection of taxes and other privileges the North will have in the future, if I declare you our rightful king.”

The smile does not quite die on his face, but she should say it does develop a certain… wither.


	83. Apology (Arthur & Elia)

#5 - Elia/Arthur

Afterwards, it is Arthur who escorts her back to her tent, since Oberyn is in a fury and has had to near forcibly restrained by her more hardy ladies in waiting, while Elia repeatedly pleaded, threatened, and guilted him into not making any more of a scene- the last thing she needs, any of them needs, is him attacking Rhaegar, or worse, the Lady Lyanna herself, she can already hear the rumors now; “the Dornish princess is in a rage, and has compelled her treacherous, sly brother to poison our sweet prince and his lady love!” 

The stuff of songs, it would be. Well, she has heard all the songs. 

They never end well for women in her position. 

She keeps her composure all the way back to the tent, though her eyes sting and burn, and smiles politely at acquaintances and friends alike, forcing herself to ignore every stare, whisper, and horrified look. They could not care less what Rhaegar looks like right now, if he is overcome with guilt or remorse or if he is proud and unashamed of what he has done. 

No, it is her they all look to, wondering if the mask of serenity is about to crack and reveal a mass of hissing vipers underneath. Elia has endured more than one humiliation during her marriage to Rhaegar, though usually at the hands of the King and his tittering sycophants, too craven to do much but agree with his sneering remarks about her ‘Dornish smell’ and her ‘Dornish looks’ and her ‘Dornish ladies’. 

What they all would really like, she feels, is for her to break down into great sobbing tears, or even better, in their minds, to fly in a fury, screaming Rhaegar’s name and swearing vengeance. 

Then they could find some fault with her, could prove that she has always been a nagging shrew who drove Rhaegar from her bed with her willful Dornish ways. 

“Elia,” Arthur says, touching her arm gently once they are temporarily alone in the quiet of her spacious cloth-of-gold tent. 

He only ever calls her ‘Elia’ when he is alone with her and her ladies, does not dare to address her as anything but ‘Your Grace’ when in the company of others, even Rhaegar, who he counts as his dearest friend. 

Arthur was one of her dearest friends, once, when they were small. She does not begrudge him his close bond with Rhaegar, but- she has so little that is just hers alone. Even her children are not hers alone. 

Rhaenys is still napping in a corner, under the close watch of her nursemaid. 

“Elia, I am sorry-,”

“Tell me you did not know he was planning such a thing,” she interrupts Arthur, removing her arm from him. She trusts Arthur with her life. She is no longer sure if she trusts him with anything else. 

“Swear to me you had no idea he was going to do that. Swear.”

Arthur hesitates. 

Elia runs her teeth along her bottom lip, then says, “Is that where he has been, then? Not meeting with the lords, but seducing a girl of fourteen? His cousin’s betrothed?”

“When His Grace arrived, Rhaegar was… disheartened.”

“Disheartened,” she says. “Well, that makes two of us. You may tell my husband that I wish to be alone for the rest of the evening. I am very tired from the day’s festivities. I am sure he will understand.”

Arthur reaches for her hand again, but she brushes him off without another word, turning towards her daughter, just now waking from her nap, crusty-eyed and smiling sleepily.


	84. Worry (Harrion & Lysara)

#20 - Harrion & Lysara

He’s shaken awake at an unknown hour, and blinks blearily to find Nell standing over him, before she sits on the edge of the bed. 

She must have gotten up. Before, when he came into the room, she was asleep in bed next to Lysara, holding her. 

Three years old and a fever and cough. Harry has seen many children get over these things in a few days, none the worse for the wear. 

He has also known many children who have died from something as seemingly minor as a fever and a cough. 

Lysara is not his child, and not his blood. He had expected to be fond of her, maybe even feel for her as he would a favorite niece or young cousin, but never as though she were his daughter. 

She isn’t his daughter. She will never call him her father. 

Still, the fear that had sunk its claws into him, slowly and carefully, over the course of the night, was not so easy to ignore. 

He rolls away from Nell, feeling at Lysara’s forehead. It’s warm but no longer burning. The fever’s passed. 

He swallows back the relief. “She’s doing better now.”

“Yes,” says Nell, hoarsely. “I’m going to let the maester know. You stay with her.” She squeezes his hand briefly, then goes, leaving Harry alone with his stepdaughter. 

He stares down at Lsyara’s small, smooth face. Even her eyelashes are auburn, like her hair. Nell doesn’t think her daughter look at all like her, save for the eyes, but Harry disagrees. 

She looks very much like her mother while she is sleeping, right down to the small frown. 

Nell always frowns in her sleep. 

He strokes some of Lysara’s curls back from her face. She needs a bath and a change of clothes. There’s dried spit on her woolen shift and her socks are dirty. 

He pats her small back, then smiles faintly when she mumbles something to herself in her sleep.


	85. On a bruise (Lyanna & Eddara)

#14 - Lyanna & Eddara

“There you go,” Edda says with a flat edge as she dumps another bucketful of water into the tub. 

Usually Lyanna would have called upon a maid to help her bathe, but this is a special occasion, since no one can know how she received these bruises, none of them in the usual places Lyanna might get them. 

In fact, they look rather like the pattern of bruises often seen on Brandon, after a tourney. 

“It’s freezing,” her sister hisses, even as she scrubs furiously at her back. “Couldn’t you at least warm it first?”

The look Eddara gives her might be colder than the water. Lyanna bites her tongue, for once, and wrings out her thick hair again, pushing it in front of her chest to better reach her shoulders. 

After another few moments of standing there glowering, Edda gives in and comes over to help her wash, picking up a cloth. 

“You’ve still got dirt on your neck,” she says, tapping her sister on the shoulder to get her to raise her chin up.

Lyanna winces; she’s tapped a bruise.

“Sorry,” says Edda, before scrubbing at Lyanna’s pale neck. 

She doesn’t feel very sorry; she feels exhausted from the day’s events, and ready to forget all of this as soon as the bathwater is thrown out, along with, she hopes, any plans of her sister’s to ever repeat this. 

She is extraordinarily lucky she was not caught. They all are. It does not bear thinking about. 

Grey peers into grey; Lyanna holds her gaze defiantly for a moment, then looks away, chastened, if not regretful.

She’s not much one for regrets, Edda’s fierce little sister. 

Sometimes Eddara rather wishes she was.


	86. For luck (Malora & Brynden)

#10 - Brynden/Malora

In her dream, the Hightower opens up into a void, no winding stairwells, just a pit descending deep into the earth. 

Malora falls past windows full of light, but they become more and more infrequent until finally there is only the darkness and the muffled echo of footfall and voices, a world away. She stops feeling like she is plummeting, and begins to feel as she is floating. 

Though some part of her knows she is sick in bed with a fever, her skin feels cool, almost cold, here. 

She tries to look down, and is surprised to see stars beneath her. Or maybe they are above her, and she is upside down. 

The crow that lands on her shoulder seems almost blue in the very faint light. 

Malora reaches for it, but it flaps away, hovering in front of her face instead. She is not moving at all anymore, suspended in the air as if on a rope or wire. Her hands shake violently as she caresses its plumage, before it drives its beak hard into her forehead. 

Her vision shutters. 

She is five years old, reading aloud from a maester’s text without missing a single word. She is ten years old, using a Myrish lens to peer across the city’s landscape, trying to commit all those landmarks to memory. She is fifteen years old, writing out an equation on the floor with chalk, her wild hair contained to a rough braid. 

The crow pecks again, a more gentle motion. Its feathers glide over her hands, and she rises with it. The darkness peels away like curtains from a window, the Hightower flattens, and the city spans out beneath her in the dawn light. 

It’s so beautiful she could not speak even if she wanted to. 

Beyond it, the sea laps into the bay, and beyond that, the sky is a shimmering golden web. Malora smiles to see it, and wakes with a gasp, tears trickling down her flushed cheeks, as her sister cries out in relief and embraces her, sobbing.


	87. Happiness (Lysa/Malora)

#3 - Malora/Lysa

Lysa had not expected to spend most of her time with her husband’s eccentric eldest sister, following her whirlwind wedding and tour of the Reach. 

But while she adores Baelor, loves his handsome face and gleaming blonde hair almost as bright as his broad smile, it is a more aesthetic sort of appreciation, she can admit. 

She cares for him, truly, and he has been so very kind and gallant to her, always mindful of her feelings and eager to please his young wife, but it is Malora who intrigues her. 

This should not be; Baelor is what she should want more anything, his mere presence should blind her to all others. He is everything she has ever been taught to love and worship.

But Malora is a force all her own. Nothing about Malora was made to be ignored. Just a few inches shy of six feet tall, with a head of wild carrot red curls that she usually keeps hidden under a wimple or cowl, to keep them from getting in the way of her experiments, Malora seems less a person and more an… energy, flowing from room to room. 

She says exactly what is on her mind, she never apologizes, she does what she pleases, when she pleases, and woe be to any who try to stop her. Rhea says she’s scared off five separate suitors in three years, that she has declared she will never wed, and that she would poison any man who tried to force her to. 

Lysa can believe that. Some of the servants earnestly believe Malora is a witch. 

Lysa doesn’t know if that’s true, but sitting up with Malora in her turret room draped in tapestries, rugs, lanterns, and books, all sorts of books, does feel like something out of one of the stories Catelyn would tell her when they laid awake at night, giggling and whispering. 

Only in those stories the lady was supposed to ride off with the knight at the end, after escaping the scheming sorceress. 

Lysa does not want to escape Malora. Quite the contrary. 

When Malora grins in delight, showing all her gleaming teeth, so similar to her brother’s, after having successfully turned a flame blue with a handful of powder she ground out herself, she whirls on Lysa and picks her up by the waist, embracing her happily, and Lysa clings to her in response, overjoyed by this simple show of affection more than by any of Baelor’s sweet kisses and caresses.


	88. Happiness (Willas/Lysa)

#2 - Willas/Lysa

Lysa knows Catelyn pities her, even if her proud sister will never admit it. She does. 

They were betrothed within the span of a year, Catelyn to Brandon, Lysa to Willas, but during Lysa’s very first visit to Highgarden with Uncle Brynden and Aunt Shella, she watched Willas go under his horse on his very first tilt against Prince Oberyn. 

For a moment Lysa had been convinced she’d just watched her betrothed die before her very eyes, and they’d only had all but two brief conversations. 

But Willas was not dead; his horse had only crushed his left leg. Only. 

Instead of attending balls and fairs and hunts, Lysa had found herself waiting in her rooms with only her uncle for comfort, to hear whether Willas would lose the leg or not, or be forever bedbound. He did not, and he was not. 

It took months, but now, four years later, he can walk with crutches on his worse days, and with a cane and a brace on his leg on his better days. 

Lysa is very used to the pity, by now, for him and herself. 

You poor thing, her sister’s eyes seem to say. My Brandon is well and whole, but you must wed a cripple who will never be a knight, never be a warrior.

Well, Lysa does not care. 

Oh, she did at first, cried herself to sleep many nights, terrible as it sound, but she never really knew Willas the over eager young squire, Willas who would have no doubt went on to become a splendid knight, and would be always off gallivanting about with Garlan, leaving her behind. 

This Willas, the one she has come to know and love, occupies himself with reading and writing and stargazing and hawking and gardening, and he would never leave her behind. 

When she takes his hands in hers between the grand white marble altars of the Mother and Father in Highgarden’s glorious sept, she feels nothing but crushing relief, not shame or pity or anger, and sees it reflected back in the warmth of his bright brown eyes as he smiles at her.


	89. After a tough day (Howland/Berena)

#15 - Howland/Berena

Berena is almost offended that no one seems to care that she and Howl slip off together to go drink by the lake, but Brandon is too busy shouting at Lya, who is shouting back at him, while Ned tries to mediate between the two, only to be shouted at by both of them. 

And Robert and Elbert, who might otherwise feel compelled to keep a brotherly eye on Berena, especially given today’s events, are no doubt off drinking and wenching to cheer Robert up after the humiliating experience of seeing his betrothed publicly flattered and courted by the crown prince. 

All the same, she is glad to be out of the oppressive confines of the tents, and marches down to the dark expanse of the God’s Eye, watching the sun sink low between the trees. 

Howland keeps even pace with her, though Berena is near three inches taller, and they find a willow tree to sit underneath. Berena pours the first cup of wine, and hands it to him. “To mystery knights.”

“To laughing weirwoods,” he says, with mock solemnity, and they both break into nervous chuckles. 

He knows, she thinks. He will never say a word, he is too loyal, but he knows what we did, Lyanna and me. She pushes the thought away; they both drink. 

Howland’s skin is a shade darker than hers, but smooth and unmarked, and creates a pleasing contrast with his chestnut brown hair. His eyes are hazel, streaked with blue and green. They lapse into silence, sitting across from one another, listening to the small waves from the lake lap up along the shore. 

The God’s Eye is beautiful in the sunset, but there is a chill in the air that was not there last night. Howl reaches over and takes her hand in his. 

Berena lets him, and silently wills him to kiss her. He seems about to lean forward, then hesitates. 

If Lyanna can have a flower crown from the most beautiful man in the realm, I can have a bloody kiss from a crannogman, Berena thinks, and presses her lips to his, tasting the wine of them, before it is replaced by something else, as he pushes her hair behind her shoulders in order to pull her closer.


	90. Apology (Tom/Amy, Genderbent)

#5 - Tom/Amy

“Will you please open the door?” he says, pressing his forehead level with the cool wood in exasperation. 

He can hear her breathing on the other side of it; when she gets angry, her face doesn’t always heat up and she rarely raises her voice, but her breaths always come in quick and stuttering in fury. It makes her sound like a little puppy or something, almost panting, except not in excitement but in anger. 

He’s met with silence. He knocks again, loud enough for it to echo down the hall, and is rewarded with the door swinging open, so fast he almost loses his balance and stumbles forward. 

“I hope you’ve come to apologize,” she says, tartly, staring down her nose at him and angrily brushing a stray lock of dark hair behind a small, pale ear. She almost always keeps her hair neatly tied back into one braid with a ribbon at the end, but she tends to fuss with it when she’s annoyed and unwilling to show it.

“I’m sorry,” he says, unconvincingly. Her lips thin to a narrow pink line. 

He tries a little more conviction. “I’m sorry I called you that. It wasn’t fair to- to get angry with you. I know you were just trying to fit in.”

“I don’t need to fit in,” she snaps. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”

“I didn’t mean that-,”

“Well, you’re not very good at expressing yourself without sounding like a complete moron!” she says contemptuously, and turns away from him.

He grabs at her hand and succeeds in catching it; she seems like she’s going to wrench it away from him, then stops, waiting. 

“Of course there’s nothing wrong with you,” he says, carefully. “I just… Sometimes I get worried you’ll just not want to… to talk to me anymore one day, and that will be it.”

She’s stiff and silent, but then he sees the sharp lines of her pointed face soften slightly. “That’s not going to happen,” she says, squeezing his hand and managing to make it sound like both a promise and a warning.


	91. Comfort (Sansa & Lady)

#9 - Sansa & Lady

It’s not fair, Sansa thinks, furiously, as she paces back and forth in her room. It’s not fair in the least. 

How can Father just decide to send them back home, just like that? 

A warm breeze flows through her window, and a bird is chirping along the eaves nearby, as if to reassure her, but she doesn’t feel very reassured. This is supposed to be her life now. Here. At court. As the prince’s betrothed. She’ll be completely humiliated if they wash up in White Harbor a few weeks from now, her betrothal broken, rejected from the Red Keep. 

People will say she did something wrong, or that Prince Joffrey found some fault with her, and then no one will want to wed her, not even a northman. It’s not fair! Of course Arya is thrilled to be going home, she’s never even tried to fit in and she still gets her stupid dancing lessons. Father couldn’t even find Sansa a harp teacher. Too busy with his duties as Hand. 

And what about that? He’s just given up? She feels tears prick at her eyelashes. Part of her does want to go home, wants to see her mother and brothers again, but not like this! This was supposed to be a great adventure, and so far it’s just been one embarrassment after another. 

Lady whines from her place on Sansa’s bed, a fresh ribbon twined into her cord collar. Sansa feels like her one consolation is that Lady will be more comfortable back at Winterfell; she doesn’t like the Red Keep very much, and the Queen doesn’t like it when Sansa brings Lady to court sessions. Sometimes she even thinks Joffrey is scared of her, silly as that sounds. Lady’s gentle and obedient. She would never hurt anyone- wait. The Queen. 

She could go to Queen Cersei. She could convince Father to let Sansa stay. He could just send Arya back home. Sansa is older and more mature, nearly twelve, she could stay and- and help him like a good daughter should, and she could still be here at court, and- 

Summoning up her courage, she smooths down her skirts and brushes her long hair back from her face. There’s no guard posted outside her door, and she should be able to slip past the ones guarding the entry to the Tower of the Hand, she’s seen Arya do it loads of times, and she and Jeyne have snuck out to the kitchens before. 

But no sooner has Sansa reached the door when Lady has jumped off the bed and physically put herself between her and the exit, whining and barking. Sansa steps back, startled by this display. Lady is usually so quiet. 

“What’s wrong?” she asks the wolf, patting her head. Lady licks at her hand, but won’t budge. Sansa tries to skirt around her, but Lady has only gotten bigger and bigger since they came here, and Sansa isn’t strong enough to force her out of the way. 

“Lady,” she says, crossly, “let me pass!” But her direwolf only stares at her, her yellow eyes gazing into Sansa’s blue. For some reason, the back of Sansa’s neck prickles, not with fear, but foreboding of a sort. 

“Do you smell something?” she asks, slowly. “Is… is there something dangerous out there?”

Lady growls, then lies down in front of the door. Sansa slowly sits down beside her. “The Queen is a good woman,” she tells Lady. “She’s always been kind to me. I know… I know she doesn’t like you much, but I’m sure if she knew you-,” Lady licks at her hands again, and Sansa giggles a little in spite of her nerves. 

“Maybe you’re right,” she says, scratching Lady behind the ear. “I… I suppose that would have been very willful of me, sneaking around like that. You just don’t want me in trouble, is that it? I wish Nymeria would keep Arya out of trouble, instead of getting her into more!”

Lady just whines, but seems a little more at ease now that Sansa is fiddling with the ribbon around her neck.


	92. Comfort (Jaime/Arthur)

#9 - Jaime/Arthur Dayne

“You’re alright,” Ser Arthur says to him, hauling him back onto his feet with one easy pull. 

Jaime is tall and strong for his age and is used to towering over the other boys, but Arthur Dayne is nearly five years his elder and has the casual air of experience and calm to show for it, whereas Jaime is a bundle of crackling anger, confusion, and excitement. 

Their first brush with the Brotherhood was brief, but they came away with no injuries. He knows he’s not injured but his body doesn’t seem to have caught on yet; he’s trembling violently all over from nerves after having lost his seat in the saddle. 

He imagines for a moment what might have happened had his foot caught in the stirrups and dragged him along over the rough ground, or if he’d brought his destrier down on top of himself, then pushes the thought away. That didn’t happen, he wouldn’t have let that happen to him, he’s not a fool. He’s alright, as Arthur keeps saying, leading him back to the horses like a child. 

Jaime flushes in embarrassment at this treatment, but can’t bring himself to tear his arm out of the Arthur’s firm hold, not just because it would be disrespectful to the Sword of the Morning, one of the last true heroes in the world, but because there is some comfort to be found there. 

He doesn’t remember anyone ever picking him back up on his feet and holding him, not since he was very small. 

He’s a Lannister, he’s not a craven, he doesn’t need to be comforted like a little boy. Still, he does not jerk away, as Ser Arthur squeezes his shoulder affectionately.

“You did well,” he says, and Jaime gazes into his violet eyes, hungry for more praise and stiff with adolescent pride.


	93. On a bruise (Donella/Harrion)

#14 - Donella/Harrion

Nell has already worked herself up into a fine temper by the time Harry lets go of her bruised and welted arm. 

The bloody bowstring snapped, to her embarrassment and annoyance, and it wouldn’t ordinarily be such an ordeal, but it struck her wrist on the recoil and she gasped aloud in pain and now her husband is behaving as if she just took a savage wound in a fight with a bear, fussing without really saying much of anything, and looking at her critically, she thinks, with a vague air of ‘now you see why you ought to keep to hawking and leave the proper hunting to the men’. 

“You should be more careful,” he says. “Not just with the bow. You need to keep a grip on your reins while riding, you cannot expect it to go well every time you decide to guide with the stirrups-,”

“My mother was a Ryswell of the Rills, I do not require your tutelage on how to handle a horse,” Nell snaps. “I’ve been doing this for years-,”

“Well, someone should have stopped you! Gods know your aunt indulged your every whim-,”

“You,” she says, feeling like ripping the cold compress off her wrist and throwing it at him, “are not the first man to think to stop me, and you will not be the last, but you had best explain how you mean to keep me from my saddle and my quiver-,”

“I don’t mean to keep you from anything,” he says in exasperation, “though you bicker with me so any sensible man would forbid you it outright just so he’d not have to argue with you-,” he cuts himself off at the look on her face, then winces. “Nell. You know I would never-,”

“Give us both a target, my lord,” she says icily, “and we’ll see whose aim is truer. I’d put money on mine, unless you are hiding some skill with the longbow-,”

“Alright, I apologize,” he snaps. “Gods be good. I only worry for you, which I will not apologize for, as it is not a right I intend to relinquish. Will you be peaceable now?”

Nell glowers at him for a moment longer, then relents when he bends down and kisses her wrist, briefly. 

She allows a begrudging squeeze of his hand in hers as she stands up from the bed, and loops her arm around his waist in a swift one-armed embrace, almost childishly, before letting go. 

“Good,” she says. “Now you can watch me string it. Mayhaps you’ll learn something useful, besides irritating your wife.”

“A great passion of mine,” he mutters after her, though he keeps pace with her out the door.


	94. Protect (Arianne/Domeric)

#8 - Arianne/Domeric

Quite possibly the only good thing about her father inviting the likes of Lord Horton Redfort, who is old enough to be Arianne’s own father, if not her grandfather, to Sunspear, is that Redfort brought along sons, most of them married save the youngest, who she judges too boyish for her, but are still entertaining enough, even if they are Valemen and thus haughty and standoffish in their way. 

But better yet, he also brought along his ward and squire, one Domeric of House Bolton, who is just a year younger than Arianne and whom she does not find too boyish or immature in the least. 

True, he is not the usual sort of man she goes for in looks, but he has a full head of thick dark hair that curls in soft waves around his very pale, almost porcelain face, and while his eyes were unnerving the first few times she met their grey gaze, she finds them almost charming now. 

He has a pleasant speaking voice, too, soft and melodious but not breathy or too mellow, and carries himself gracefully; an excellent dancer and one of the finest riders she’s ever seen. 

And gods, he can sing! He plays the harp better than Nymeria or Tyene, even, and has a voice fair and warm enough to make his living as a singer, were he not heir to the Dreadfort.

Arianne is not thinking of marriage, of course. She has little interest in wedding a northman and forsaking her rightful claim to Dorne- rightful if she has anything to say about it- in exchange for life in some frosty keep isolated deep in some dark wood or snowy mountains. 

But she has never been one to deny herself a good infatuation, and while Domeric is reserved, hardly a flatterer or a sycophant, she does not think her flirtation is at all unwelcome. Far from it. 

She is whispering back and forth with Tyene, in fact, a little about him but mostly about Mychel Redfort’s ineffectual flirting with Tyene, who could not be less interested but finds it more enjoyable to tease and torment the poor boy, when there is a shout and uproar as a spooked horse breaks free and gallops straight towards them. 

Tyene gasps and makes to yank Arianne out of the way, but Arianne is caught between shock and fear and freezes up, her breath caught in her throat. 

Up until Domeric Bolton manages to catch the reins and all but throw himself under the horse’s belly, narrowly evading its stomping hooves, as he slows it from a gallop to a canter to a trot before she can be struck.

Arianne is still standing there, stunned, when he comes over to see if she she is alright, a hand resting lightly on her arm. 

She takes it and squeezes it until his pale skin flushes crimson, feeling she does not need word at all; her gaze speaks volumes alone.


	95. To say good morning (Alys/Sigorn)

#7 - Alys/Sigorn

If you’d told Alys two years ago that she would wake the morning after her wedding in a small, dingy, drafty bedroom at Castle Black, beside her wildling husband, covered furs from very recent kills and still reeking of horse from her frantic flight north, she thinks she would have laughed until she screamed. 

But that is the long and short of it; she wakes wedged beside her Thenn husband, one of her legs pinned between his, and his arm slung over her waist. 

By all rights she should be caught between horror and terror; Alys was taught that wildlings were a pack of savage rapers and reavers, little more than animals, really, and that the Thenns were barely any better, a primitive people stuck in primitive times who followed strength because they were too dim to conceive of anything else. 

She should be terrified of Sigorn, certainly should not have drank too much at her wedding- and encouraged him to drink just as much- danced wildly with him, and then fallen into bed without having to be prodded or cajoled

But there you have it. She was married in a plain, ugly, crudely sewn white gown, her hair still damp from a lukewarm bath, teeth chattering during the blustery ceremony, eyes watering from the ditch fire they leapt over- sacrilege, her kin would call it, she spat in the faces of the old god and defiled herself and her faith with such a ceremony- and worst of all, she managed to enjoy herself during her brief feast and clumsy, confused, but ultimately enthusiastic bedding. 

Alys loved Daryn, truly, and promised to always love him, before he went to war. She does not know if she loves Sigorn, if she will ever love Sigorn. 

What she does know is that he is not cruel, or even cold in his mannerisms, that he cares about wellbeing, at the very least, and that when he sleeps, he wraps himself around her the way a child might; his rough beard is tickling her chest and his looks utterly content in his sleep. 

Alys stays where she is, staying at the ceiling, and keeps her hand resting on his upper back, listening to his steady breathing and feeling a silly swell of affection for a man she barely knows bloom in her chest.


	96. Annoyance (Visenya/Sharra)

#22 - Visenya/Sharra

“My brother writes,” Visenya says, at one point, when they are finished with each other and Sharra is slipping her shift back on; no one sleeps nude at the Eyrie, not even in the depths of summer, mountain tops are always cold. “To urge me back to the Aegonfort with all haste. He and my sister feel I have tarried here too long already.”

One of the many infuriating things about Visenya is her insistence on a sort of forced neutrality when discussing her siblings, such a stark change from her sharply passionate feelings on all else, as much she tries to conceal them behind an icy front of cold duty and severe formalities. 

That means all the more coming from Sharra, for the Valemen adore formality and despise the breaking of tradition or flippant disregard for public perception. 

“You brother writes,” she says, as she adjusts the neckline of her thick woolen shift, not designed to entice but to warm, and lies back down beside Visenya, who seems to generate her own heat and needs no clothing to do so, just the flush of blood moving underneath her porcelain skin, crawling through those veins. “And you shall go swooping back home, the little bird returned to her nest?”

Visenya is a tall woman, tall and powerfully built, with muscled arms and shoulders from years of sparring, and the sort of thighs that open and close like a steel trap. 

Sharra, however, is half an inch taller than her, and shall never let her forget it, even if Visenya could easily overpower her- Sharra is slender, verging on skinny, flat-chested and narrow-hipped, unlike Visenya’s shapely build. 

Besides, the teasing of ‘little bird’ is worth it to see a Targaryen queen flustered. 

“He is my king,” she snaps, grabbing Sharra’s wrist. “And yours as well, now.”

“Yes, my dear protector, I am forever grateful to him for taking us under his noble wing,” Sharra mocks, kissing Visenya’s calloused fingers, trying to tease more of a blush out of her. “Perhaps I should accompany you back, to pay my respects. Oh, glorious Aegon, how I quail before your might- I, but a simple woman, and you, a lord of Dragonstone, a breaker of kings-,”

“Don’t be flippant,” Visenya grouses, but pulls Sharra down to kiss her. 

“Forgive me, Your Grace,” Sharra says. “I was weaned on mocking the little kings on the ground and their wars from a young age. It’s a hard habit to break, you understand, I am sure. Looking down on men’s frailties.” She smirks. 

Visenya scowls, but wraps her arms around Sharra, holding her close. “You might say you will miss me.”

“I will miss you,” Sharra promises. It is the most honest thing she’s said all night.


	97. Relief (Sansa & Wynafryd)

#2 - Sansa & Wynafryd

Sansa is more than relieved that the Manderly sisters are joining them, among the other women of what will be their northern court-within-a-court, during the travel south, even if she does not know either of them very well. 

But White Harbor is by and large the seat of art and culture in the North, and Wynafryd and Wylla are the sort of girls she always wanted for sisters- especially Wynafryd, who seems so effortlessly patient and gracious, a true lady. Wylla is a little more wild, even if Arya is far worse, but Sansa finds her little sister to be much more tolerable with the Manderly girls come between them. Wylla loves to ride- though Arya is better, Sansa will admit, just never to her sister’s face, Arya would never let her forget it. 

And Wylla is more than happy to accompany Arya off on whatever strange and childish adventures she’s decided to have for the day, while giving it a veneer of respectability, Sansa thinks, that leaves her feeling more fondly exasperated than genuinely annoyed and worried over the possibility of her sister embarrassing her in front of the queen, or worse, the prince. 

Meanwhile, Wynafryd has taken Sansa and Jeyne- but mostly Sansa, Sansa thinks with a flare of pride, under her wing, and she really is so talented and modest- she has some of the finest needlework Sansa has ever seen, and her weaving is exquisite. Besides that, she is a natural at the bells, has a fine singing voice, and knows enough of the high harp to begin teaching Sansa on a miniature, which thrills her to pieces. 

She doesn’t like to ride much more than Sansa does, but she does like to walk, and Sansa happily holds Wynafryd’s arm as they stroll along the gleaming waters of the Trident, the the dewy grass fresh on the warm breeze, Lady loping ahead, happy to stretch her legs after days of being cooped up in a wheelhouse. 

“I’m so glad you’re here with us,” Sansa tells Wynafryd, hoping she sounds appreciative and not like a little shy child, “Truly. Lady Jonelle says you are an example to us all, and- and things are ever so much nicer when it’s not just me and Arya.”

“I used to feel the same way about Wylla,” Wynafryd says, though she pats Sansa’s hand fondly; Sansa flushes pink in pleasure. 

“What happened? You seem so close now,” she can’t help but ask.

Wynafryd grins; despite her immaculate manners, she has the same grin as her blithe younger sister, when she is not just smiling to be polite. 

Sansa is reminded how much older she is; nearly eighteen, a woman in her own right, though still a maid. “We grew a little older,” she says, “and learned it was far more fun to snipe at the world together than at each other.”


	98. Comfort (Catelyn/Barbrey)

#9 - Catelyn/Barbrey

Barbrey knew, in her heart of hearts, that when she bade farewell to Willam that day before he rode south to war and then even further south to Dorne in search of Lyanna, that she might never see him again, that she might be left a widow. 

What she could not have predicted was Willam returning sobered but whole and well to her, along with Ned Stark’s bones, struck down by Arthur Dayne as he and his companions attempted to rescue his sister. The remainder of the Kingsguard is dead, now, but so is Lyanna, and so is Eddard. 

So it is not Barbrey who is the widow dressed in fresh blacks, her hair pulled tight in a knot behind her head, but Catelyn Tully, who she wanted to hate, who she does hate, she reminds herself, for stealing what should have been Barbrey’s. Losing her husband did not lose her Winterfell, as losing Brandon lost Barbrey Winterfell. 

Ned Stark left behind the son he sired on his fishy wife on their wedding night, little Robb, six moons old and fatherless. Catelyn Tully will rule as regent for the next sixteen years, and the grumblings of the northern lords have only been quelled by the steadfast presence of young Benjen, who many of them would have gladly championed as Lord Stark if Robb did not live, or had he been born a daughter. 

“You have my sincere condolences, my lady,” she says, inclining her head. Her courses are late, and she hopes Will got a child on her from the night of his, if not triumphant, as least relieved return. He will not speak much of it, will not tell her anything beyond the bare bones of what happened. 

But at least he is not Howland Reed, who brought back a bastard boy sired on some southron serving girl. Ned, he is calling the child, for his fallen friend. Eddard Snow of Greywater Watch. 

It would be almost laughable, if Barbrey was not so struck by her husband’s genuine grief for his fallen friends; Ethan and Mark and Theo. Well, she is grieving too. Mark was her cousin, and though they were never close, he was still a Ryswell of the Rills. 

Mark Dustin would make a fine name for their first son. If not, then perhaps Bethany for a girl, after her sister, that would be fitting. 

“Thank you.” Catelyn Tully’s voice is raw and hoarse, but she still has her pride, that much is clear from her rigid bearing, and the fierce look in those bright blue eyes of hers, her son in a sling at her chest. 

Barbrey doesn’t think she will ever like the woman, who will be forever remembered as the one who snatched Brandon away from her… but she thinks she could respect her, perhaps. In spite of herself, she lays a hand on Catelyn’s arm for a moment. 

“You will always have the loyalty of House Dustin,” Will is telling her, gruffly but earnestly, but Catelyn Tully’s blue-eyed gaze never leaves Barbrey’s for that moment, and it almost takes her breath away, like looking into twin forest pools. 

Then it over; Barbrey retracts her hand and rejoins her husband as they are shown out, the next mourners coming up to the… to the new Lady Stark.


	99. After a tough day (Aegon & Donella)

#15 - Young Griff & Nell

He wakes in an unfamiliar bed, feeling like his nose and throat are so clogged up he’s surprised he can breathe, his face raw and cracked from hours out in the wind and cold, and being stared down by Robb Stark’s widow. 

Aegon supposes it’s impolite to consistently refer to the girl- woman, she has a child of her own, she is most certainly not a maid, something that he should not be dwelling on- as Stark’s widow when she is clearly formidable for a woman in her own right, but though she was born a treacherous Bolton, he thinks he sees in those pale eyes a nobility of spirit which might suggest more than cold cunning and fierce protection of her daughter. 

Also, he might be a tad delirious, since he’s not certain that he isn’t dead. This could be a dream. The last thing he remembered he’d fallen from his horse, and he feels sore and stiff all over, though not in serious pain. 

“You’re awake,” she says, deliberately slowly, as if the raging blizzard outside might have deafened him.

“My men,” he says, thickly, hoarsely, “how- did they retreat?”

“Most made it back inside the keep,” she says, pouring him a cup of water. 

Aegon takes it, and tries to sit up, embarrassed that he has to grasp it with two bruised and bloodied hands, like a child. 

“That’s good,” he says, when his throat is a little less raw and parched. “I… the Others are more… they are not as I’d thought they be.”

“What did you expect?” she huffs. “More mindless corpses? Dim-witted monsters that would turn and run as soon as you unsheathed Blackfyre?”

At the name of the sword Aegon stiffens and looks around wildly- he can’t lose it, he can’t- then recognizes the familiar scabbard lying on a table. “Thank the gods,” he says. “Jon would crawl out of the grave to kill me had I lost that blade.”

Donella Stark’s critical gaze softens, slightly, he would like to think. She takes his hand and squeezes it, more testing his grip than to show any affection, but he’ll take what he can get. 

It’s not quite the image one would like- he’d prefer a beautiful maiden draped across the bedspread, pleading with the Seven to let him live- but it is the end of the world, so he will have to settle for some dead Stark’s grim widow patting him on the knuckles and saying, “You’ll have plenty of chances to lose it again, if you mean to lead men out again tonight.”

“I do,” he says, extricating his hand, and flexing his long fingers. Two of his nails are broken, gone reddish purple. But better broken nails than a broken back or neck.


	100. Love (Sandor/Mira)

#1 - Sandor/Mira

After two hours he is banished to the kennels, where his furious pacing and occasional muffled swears of impatience and frustration will not bother anyone but the dogs. Sandor gives up on that after a little while, though, and winds up sitting on a low stool outside the pens, watching the puppies from the latest litter tumble and play, whimpering and barking as they stumble over one another, tiny tails wagging. 

Birth shouldn’t be something new to him. He’s watched countless dogs in labor, and horses and cows and sheep and pigs too- it’s not so different for humans. And he remembers his mother’s last birth, when he was five. She did not die in the childbed, but it left her so weakened that a winter chill carried her away less than a year later. 

Mira is not his mother, he tells himself. Mira is healthy and strong, and this is her first pregnancy. Her first and last, if he has anything to say about it. 

He’s already resolved that he does not want to risk it again, even if all goes well this time. She might not be tiny but she is small compared to him, and he doesn’t care what any maester says about her having good hips, he could not- he will not live in a world where he might be the cause of her death. 

She’s reminded him, many times, that it’s not healthy for a woman to be constantly consuming moon tea, even a weakened blend, but if that’s the case he can spill his seed on the sheets for the rest of their lives, until she’s past the age of having children, he doesn’t care. 

She’s fine, he tells himself, once again. She will be fine. She is not going to die. The babe is not going to die. One of the puppies begins to cry for its mother, who comes over to lick it. 

There’s a distant shout from outside. Sandor jumps to his feet, knocking over the stool, his heart in his throat, and nearly bowls over Jace, who came out to tell him that Mistress Mira’s had her baby, but the midwife says she needs to rest and that he should stay away for a while longer- Sandor isn’t listening to any of that, already on his way indoors. 

He takes the stairs two at a time, not that it’s ever been much of a problem for someone of his stature, bounds down the hall, and sends the midwife’s apprentice scurrying with a snarl that could wake the dead and keel them right back over, as Mira would say. As Mira would-

He stops, at the foot of the bed, trembling, trying to contain himself, feeling sweat bead on the back of his neck. Mira is alert and awake, staring at him, wide-eyed, a plump red infant scrabbling at her chest as it nurses. “Master Clegane,” the midwife, who does not scare as easily as her assistant, begins in exasperation, “I really do not think-,”

It takes two tries to order her out, and the second time he nearly shouts, only kept in check by the glare Mira gives him, but finally she goes, with the warning that she’ll be back shortly to check on them. Sandor stays where he is, still breathless. 

“Well,” Mira says, with a wry sort of smile, “come and see your daughter, then.”

Something tightens in his chest, and he crouches at the side of the bed; if he sits he’s afraid he’ll loom over them and the babe will see his face and wail in terror. 

But his daughter is too busy nursing to pay him much mind; Sandor takes in her plump form- she was a big infant, as he feared, though Mira doesn’t seem to be in much pain- and the patch of dark hair on her head. He knows he should say something, but can’t find the words, and instead rests his hand on the infant’s small chest. 

Mira smiles at him, and puts her hand over his, squeezing gently.


	101. Apology (Daemon/Nettles)

#5 - Daemon/Nettles

Nettles has a good arm, but even well past forty Daemon’s reflexes are honed, and he ducks, to her dismay. 

The hairbrush collides with the doorframe instead, clattering to the floor. She expects him to redden in fury, but instead he simply shuts the door behind him, picks up the hairbrush, and turns it almost thoughtfully over in his gloved hand. 

“You’ve cracked it,” he says. “Am I to assume it was not to your liking, or was that simply the only thing in reach?”

It is on the tip of her tongue to scream and shout at him, to puff herself up in rage, to rant and rave until he stops that almost condescending smile of ‘don’t be such a child’ and screams back at her, but Nettles restrains herself. He’s not the only one who can curtail their temper. 

And she’ll just prove his point if she rages and curses at him, as much as she wants to. 

“It’s useless,” she says, instead. “It’s- do you think they made a brush like that for hair like mine?” 

She wants to take him and shake him until his teeth chatter in his skull, though she’d have to stand up on her tiptoes to do so. 

Most men have gone to fat by the time they are pushing fifty, but aside from the lines in his face, around his eyes and mouth, he is still hale and strong, skin smooth and unblemished, not an ounce of extra weight on him. And she’s not the skinny, half-starved, grimy waif she once was, but she doesn’t like to lie to herself, either. 

Dragonrider or not, they have never been on equal footing, and not just physically. They will never be on even ground. That’s part of the problem. She stiffens as he comes closer, setting the ivory brush down on the table. It’s cracked, and she feels a brief jolt of guilt. It was very expensive. 

He tucks a lock of dark hair behind her ear, and presses a kiss to her brow, as a father might to a daughter. That makes her trade the guilt for anger instead. 

“I’ll get you a comb instead,” he says simply, as if that resolves everything. When she will not look at him, he tilts her chin up, but she wrenches her face away, feeling her cheeks darken with embarrassment. Now she does feel like a child again. He’s won. 

“It’s not about that,” she says, turning from him. “It’s- I am not- I won’t be-,” she can’t find the words, and she hears him about to chuckle, then whirls on him, “I won’t be bought,” she snaps, “with- with hairbrushes and looking glasses and silks and velvets! I am- I am not your whore! I am not Missy Wormtongue-,”

That succeeds in provoking him; he will never hear a word against Mysaria, even if last Nettles heard they could scarcely look at each other. The same might be said for him and the queen, but Nettles is not bold enough to test that, bold as she is. 

“You will hold your tongue,” he says, the emphasis on tongue, “when you speak of Lady Mysaria. She is none of your concern.”

“She is when you make me think you’d like to have both of us in your bed when you return to court!” Nettles snaps. 

He offers her a sharp, sardonic smile that makes the back of her neck prickle. “You’ve proven qute fond of my bed, these past weeks.”

“I don’t need bloody brushes and dresses to keep me there!” she retorts, then wants to curse herself- what is she saying? 

No. This has to stop. This… this is not what she wanted, only he’s- he’s made it all so… this is not what she wanted. She swore to herself this would not be her. That she would not be- she would not let them paint her as- as just another upjumped mistress, some common wench swept off into a prince’s bed, she is not- she is a dragonrider, she is a soldier, and she- she would have been made a lady, had Jace yet lived. 

Well, she is not, she will never be, and she has no complaints about that. But she wants- she wants to be respected, and whatever Daemon is offering her- whatever she’s foolishly taken, like a greedy little child grasping at scraps of bread in the gutter- she does not know that it is respect. 

He softens; she hates him for it. His hand comes up to cup her face, gloved fingers stroking her wet cheek. She’s horrified by her own tears, and wants to jerk away again, but then he’s pulled her close. 

“I would never try to keep you anywhere against your will,” he says. “I know you to be far too fierce and proud for that, Netty.”

Nettles, she thinks. These men, they always want her to be Netty. Well, Netty died with all the other wharf rats running around Driftmark. Nettles tamed a dragon. Nettles went to war. She is Nettles. She is not any man’s Netty, no matter- no matter how silver his tongue or tender his embrace. 

“I just want you to- to respect me,” she mutters. It sounds weak and pathetic to her ears, a little girl’s teary confession. 

He pulls back. “I respect you,” he says, soberly. She wants to believe him. He is seldom sober. She does. She must. “I only wish you’d let me care for you. I think you in dire need of it.” He strokes her hair, gently. “I think you deserve it.”

There’s a lump in her throat. Nettles swallows hard, then gives a small nod, though she does not feel triumphant or vindicated. What is she going to do? Rail at him some more? Throw things? He’s the Lord Protector, the Queen’s prince consort. She is- she is Nettles. 

Just Nettles. She desperately wants that to feel like enough. Sometimes, with him, it does. 

He releases her, removing his cloak and gloves. Nettles retreats to the window seat, feeling chastened and resentful all at once. 

He sees her watching him, arms wrapped around herself, and says, too casually, “I do have one thing you might not begrudge me to give you, sweetling.”

Nettles chews on her lower lip, and watches him produce a slim leather bound journal. “To practice your letters in,” he says. “You can throw this at my head if you like, I should think it will hurt less.”

She snorts, and after a moment, comes over to take it from him, trying and failing to ignore the small, satisfied smirk on his face.


	102. To say goodbye (Ned & Rickon)

#25 - Ned & Rickon

Rickon is hiding under the bed with Shaggydog when Ned enters his room to say goodbye. 

He can hear the boy’s harsh breathing and the wolf pup’s soft growls from the doorway. Ned stands there for a moment, wondering if he should order his son out or simply come back later, then resolves himself to be gentler with him, as Catelyn is always urging. 

Rickon can be a terror, wild and unruly and disobedient, but he is only three, little more than a toddler. 

“Where could Rickon be?” he asks aloud instead, with forced cheer. “I don’t see him anywhere.” He makes a show of stomping about the room, checking in the wardrobe and behind the curtains. 

Rickon was only given his own bedchamber six months past, when the nursery could not contain him any longer. And he was lonely there; Bran is five years older, they may not be close until they are both men grown, Ned fears. 

If Cat were with child again- well, it does no good to dwell on that. They are both still young and when they are together again- he will not be at court forever. Just long enough to do his duty.

The growls have turned to giggles. When he turns around, very slowly, Rickon is crouched on the bed, and Shaggydog is ready to play, tail wagging and head lowered. 

Ned smiles, and the wolf pup bounds over to him, barking and growling. He pats him on the head, then sits down on the bed beside his youngest child. Rickon has never been one to cuddle close to his mother or father, but now he does latch onto Ned’s arm. Ned swings him into his lap. 

“I’ve come to say goodbye,” he says, wondering when his throat became so tight. It was difficult with Robb and Jon, but- Rickon is so young. Will he start to forget him? “But I will write plenty of letters home, and Mother will read them to you, so you must be good for her, Rickon.”

“Don’t wanna be good,” Rickon says, pressing his chin against Ned’s chest. “Wanna come with you.”

“When you are a little older, you can come visit me and your sisters at court,” Ned assures him. 

Rickon’s curls are falling into his blue eyes, a paler shade than his older siblings, in some lights closer to grey. 

His son wrinkles his small nose in distaste, then says, “Maybe Shaggy can go with you. To protect you.”

Ned swallows. “I will have many men to protect me. But that’s very kind of you to offer.” 

He presses a kiss to Rickon’s warm face. “Be a good boy, alright? Listen to your mother and brothers, and don’t give Old Nan any grief, do you hear me, Rickon?” He pauses, then says, hoarsely, “I love you very much.”

“Love you too, Father,” Rickon says, standing up and throwing his arms around Ned’s neck, squeezing tightly. 

Ned inhales sharply, then pats his small back with one hand, listening to his son’s heartbeat intermingle with his own.


	103. To say hello (Jaime/Berena)

#24 - Berena/Jaime

Berena finds her second son making a map with a stick in the gravel, and overseeing this process, a very bored member of the Kingsguard. 

As a general rule, Jaime does not like children. Not that he is the sort of man to scowl at them on principle, as Stannis often does, but Berena would not call him a very patient or gentle sort of person, and for the most part her children- Robert’s children- seem to view Ser Jaime with a wary sort of anticipation, as they might the dramatic beginning of a mummer’s play, uncertain if it’s going to be frightening or fun. 

So she is surprised to see that Ned has seemingly sought him out, and she is surprised to see that Jaime is still there and has not called for some passing servant to run and fetch one of the other knights of the Kingsguard to relieve him so he can do something more interesting to him, like spar in the yard. 

Beyond that, when Jaime learned Robert had insisted on Eddard for their second boy, he’d looked vaguely ill, and even now can barely hide his grimace when Berena calls out, “Ned!”

Her son looks up at her from his position squatting on the ground, the jumps up, dusting off his trousers and waiting expectantly for to embrace him. Ned is no less spoilt than Steffon but he is a gentler, milder sort of boy, with none of his brother’s rages and willfulness. 

He is six years old and Berena is still not quite certain what Ned likes to do. Nothing, mostly. He likes to sit and daydream and draw or occasionally read- he has more of an interest in stories than Steffon has ever had. 

She almost trods on his map, then skirts around it to hug him and press a kiss to his warm head.

“What is this a map of? The Red Keep?”

“The Kingswood,” Jaime drawls. “A very accurate depiction.”

Berena glances down at the crude outlines and what looks like smiling trees. 

“Very accurate,” she says, patting Ned on the back. “You seem to know it like the back of your hand.”

This private jape between adults goes unnoticed by Ned, who declares a desire to make the map more realistic by outlining it with twigs and leaves, and trots off to collect some.

Berena watches him disappear into the hedgerows, shading her eyes with her hand. “At least he’s doing something besides sitting and pouting.”

“I suppose that comes from the Stark side of the family,” says Jaime. “His namesake sat and pouted through four council meetings after Robert was crowned, if I remember right.”

Berena flares at even the mildest insult to her brother, but shifts closer to him. 

They are still far enough apart for it to be acceptable, but for a moment his fingers ghost along her hip, then leap away. 

Someone is walking nearby. Berena turns slightly from him, and can feel his gaze searing into the back of her head.

“Hello to you too, Ser. You might set a better example for my children, and greet a queen upon her arrival.”

“If you are looking to me to set the example for your children, I pity you,” he says, but takes her hand for a moment when she extends it to him behind her back, so she does not have to look at it, so she does not have to feel the guilt. 

Then she lets go, as Ned emerges from the bushes, laden down with twigs and leaves.


	104. To say goodnight (Aemond/Alys)

#6 - Alys/Aemond

Alys’ eyelids are beginning to flutter and twitch by the time she sees the figure in the flames, the flickering shape of the man, dwarfed by the dragon coiled around him, waiting, watching, waiting again. 

An old man locked away in his stolen fortress, brooding with his wyrm on what little gold and men are left to him. She almost pities him. 

The fire extinguishes in a cloud of smoke and vapor as a bucketful of river water crashes over it. 

Alys straightens, cradling her belly, and pushing her hair behind her ears. When she was a girl her hair was short as a boy’s, but now it flows long and black and untouched by time, slickly gleaming in the lantern light. 

She watches the man through the smoke, much younger than the one she saw in the flames.

“He’s waiting for you,” she says, simply. “Your uncle.”

Aemond offers her a humorless grin in response, composed mostly of his crooked teeth. His teeth are very white, her boy’s, but they’ve always been crooked. There is a slant to his entire person, from the way he cocks his head like a dog waiting for a fight, to how he always stands at a slight angle, feet pointed in the direction he wants to, not at whomever he is speaking with. 

And at night, he sleeps crooked, slung across the bed, his sharp chin jutting into her shoulder and his legs across hers, tangled in the furs. 

“Not much for the old to do but wait, is there?” He yawns, and comes round the dying fire to take her hands in his. “Come to bed. The old bastard will keep.”

“And the young bastard,” she says, guiding his hands to her belly, where the babe is kicking hard, defiantly, “is keeping well, too.”

Aemond smiles, this time without revealing his crooked teeth, just a self-satisfied stretch of his lips, in response to the sensation. 

“Jaehaerys,” he says, “for my nephew. My brother will legitimize him. Heir to the Iron Throne, he’ll be. Our son.”

“Your uncle would tear him from my belly if he could, and feed him to Harrenhal’s dogs,” she reminds him. He must remember what is most important. 

Aemond stiffens. “He’s done his killing. Once I’ve brought him down, I’ll send his head to my sweet sister, with his banner stuffed in his mouth.”

Alys strokes his silver hair back from his flushed face. “I will pray to see it in my flames, tomorrow. Or in the waters.”

“You’ll see it with your own eyes.” But he softens and kisses her, almost sweetly, and leads her by the hand away.


	105. Apology (Sansa/Aegon)

#5 - Sansa/Aegon

When Sansa was invited to spend a day riding around the Trident with the crown prince, she’s certain she could have walked on air at the thought, just up and floated out of bed like a feather caught on a gust of wind. 

Prince Aegon is impossibly perfect, in her eyes, his silver-gold hair stark against the contrast of his tanned skin, his eyes a deep indigo. She was worried he would dismiss her as a child upon their first meeting, for he is eighteen to her thirteen, a man grown, though you would not know it from his boyish grins. 

Yet he has been the very soul of chivalry, always attentive and asking after her wellbeing and her interests- he has promised to find her a music teacher, so she might finally learn the high harp and the dulcimer, and insists she must share some of her poetry with him, when she’s worked up her courage. 

And her siblings like him as well, even Arya, who’d been quite ready to dismiss whoever Sansa was betrothed to, Sansa feels, on a matter of principle. Yet Arya seems near as delighted with Aegon as Sansa is, and not just because Princess Rhaenys has made Arya her little darling pet, but because Aegon is near as mad for horses as her sister.

So Sansa should perhaps not be shocked when Arya manages to finagle her way into being invited along- though Sansa knows that is unfair, and she would never be permitted to go off riding alone with the prince, anyways, yet still- But she is, if not vocally disappointed, disheartened, not so much because Arya’s very presence irritates her, they do not fight quite so much as they used to, these days, but because, well- in the songs, it is never ‘the lady and her knight and the lady’s little sister’, is it?

Still, at some point Arya briefly darts off up some hilly trail on her gelding, temporarily leaving Aegon and Sansa behind, and they rein up to drink water. 

Sansa nearly chokes and splutters on her sip when Aegon turns those soulful dark eyes on her and says, “I hope you will forgive me, my lady, but I hope to be as close with your sister as my own, after we are wed, and so you must not take it as any insult that I invited her out with us today.”

Sansa tries to smile graciously but is still so tongue-tied that she nearly drops her flask. 

Aegon catches it before it can fall to the ground, his fingers brushing hers, and she feels a jolt of something like glee, before she suppresses it in favor of an earnest response. “I only think better of you for it, my prince.”

“Then you honor me with your high opinion,” he teases, and Sansa turns quite pink, though her blush quickly faded when Arya comes galloping back down from the hills, shouting about having found a deer pool.


	106. Annoyance (Jon & Aegon)

#22 - Jon Snow & Young Griff

Jon is still speechless when Aegon comes over to haul him back up on his feet, trying to determine how he was so easily unmade, and so quickly, at that- he doesn’t think he overvalues his skill with a blade, but he’d long ago taken for common knowledge that he was the best swordsman along the Wall, and perhaps one of the best swordmen in the whole of the North. 

To be bested by a- by a southron would-be king whose pale hair still held lingering greenish blue traces of dye, and who carried himself with an air of casual joviality and near-arrogance that Jon finds insufferable- is a very, very hard mouthful to swallow.

“I’m fine,” he manages to mutter, restraining himself from shoving Aegon away as he claps Jon on the shoulder, still all smiles. 

Jon has been trying to determine who that smile reminds him of, and has finally settled on Robb, which brings a strange pang to his chest. 

Aegon, no matter what he says, or what he believes, is not Jon’s brother. Jon is going to play Orys to his Conqueror, and can scarcely stand to tolerate him and his men at Castle Black, though he admits its boosted their numbers significantly. 

“You don’t look it,” says Aegon, too happily. “Come on now, Snow. We’ll brush that one off as beginner’s luck. You let your guard down and I rushed in. Let’s go again, shall we?”

Jon has half a mind to drop the swords and go for fists instead, but also knows damn well that’s a far better swordsman than he is a wrestler, and so, after rolling back his shoulders and mopping his hair from his sweaty face, agrees with a tight nod. 

Aegon grins again, a quick flash of white teeth, then raises his blunted sword and shield, lowers his head the way Jon Connington must have taught him, and meets Jon in a loud ringing of steel that echoes across the yard and scares a few watching crows off the roof of the stables.


	107. To say goodbye (Jonelle & Donella)

#25 - Donella & Jonelle

Nell thinks just about the worst thing she could have done was strike up a begrudging tolerance and then something approaching a friendship with Robb’s bastard sister. 

She was well warned about this. Jonelle (who is sometimes called Nell by her siblings, which infuriates Nell, who knows now she will always be Donella, to her future husband, always held at a distance) is not what anyone would call a personable or cheery girl. 

Barbrey described as ‘a sullen stick’, and that’s not an inaccurate description; Jonelle Snow is tall, lanky, and skinny, the long oval of her face and length of her nose only emphasized by her dark hair and dark grey eyes. 

However, Nell will admit, she is not necessarily miserable company because of it, and compared to Sansa and Arya, both far too young to ever be friends of Nell’s, or much more than annoyances, by her reckoning, Jonelle has been a perhaps welcome reprieve from the unrelenting happiness and unity of the Stark household. 

Someone else whose life has not been all warm motherly embraces and whispered lullabies. 

Nell would be dreary and resentful too, in her position. 

Ned Stark made a decent enough match for her, as far as bastard matches go- marrying into the mountain clans may not be very fashionable or exciting, but it’s still considered an honorable sort of life, for a bastard girl, and they could have packed her off to the motherhouse in White Harbor instead, no matter that she’s never prayed to the Seven a day in her life. 

All that aside, Nell is not so hard-hearted to delight in Jonelle’s obvious upset to be leaving the only home she has ever known behind, and that the betrothal has been rushed forward because of her father’s promotion to Hand of the King. And she is not so contemptuous as to pity her, either. 

They have that much in common, both of them. Slow to smile and quick to take offense, prickly with their pride, belligerent of sympathy. 

“Do write me when you arrive,” she says, taking Jonelle’s hand in her own, hoping this is not taking for mocking, it truly isn’t. “Robb should like to know his favorite sister was not carried off by wildlings. Though I think they should know better than to go after someone with your skill with a bow.”

A shared love of archery and riding, too, Nell will admit, has gone a long way in building a bridge betwixt them. 

Jonelle looks for a moment as if she is trying to decide whether Nell is goading her or not, then says, almost slyly, “I’ve a fierce lesson to teach them, should they not.”


	108. To say goodnight (Amy/Jaime)

#6 - Jaime/Amy

As a matter of habit, he tries not to wind up half dead on people’s doorsteps, but if he had to pick a doorstep to collapse onto, he’d choose this one a thousand times over. 

Good healers are rare enough as it is, and good ones that don’t charge up to the ears to piece you back together, and who won’t report you to the authorities even if you arrive with the stolen goods still in hand, are even rarer. 

So as it stands, he’s feeling pretty pleased with himself by the time he passes out, after hearing the front door of the clinic creak open. 

He wakes sometime later, feeling sore and exhausted but no worse for the wear, his cuts and bruises healed, the searing pain in his ribs reduced to a dull ache, as if he’d pulled a muscle. 

He’s lying on a hard cot with an old quilt thrown haphazardly over him. Jaime glances around, the grins tiredly when he sees her sitting at her desk, scribbling in some notebook. 

“Working on the next great novel, huh, cariña?”

“I’m trying to budget,” she says, irritably, without looking up from her book. “Have to factor in the potions and salves you just used up, don’t I?”

Jaime winces. “Look. I swear I’ll pay you back, end of this week at the latest. They took everything on me, but I can make it back, I’ve got these medallions to sell-,”

“I really don’t need to hear about whatever you’re hawking on the black market this week,” Amy retorts, though she does glance up at him. 

She looks as tired as he feels, dark shadows under those pretty blue eyes of her. They’ve always reminded him of the blue eyes painted on those cheap babydolls they sell in every corner store now, only more lively, vivid. 

He feels a strange churning sensation of regret. How old is she? Twenty four? She should be out dancing with her friends, or living in some neat little bungalow near the sea with a doting husband and a few brats. Instead she’s up working all hours of the night, her singular brat sleeping upstairs. “Thanks,” he says. “For not leaving me out to rot overnight. Knew you had heart.”

“Go to sleep, Isola,” she says, though the irritation in her voice has faded some to dry exasperation. “And I want you out by dawn. Teddy will have a fit, he hears I brought you in by myself.”

Jaime has been around this particular block long enough to know that Sabath’s keeps a strict rule about a two-to-one healer to patient ratio, which Amy broke by lugging his sorry ass inside. O’Neill, annoying as he is, is just trying to look out for her.

Sensibly speaking, she, a small young woman, should probably not be taking in violent criminals for healing when she’s here alone, even if they’re spitting blood or unconscious. 

“I’ll flit off before then,” he says instead. “No worries, eh?” He reaches for the cup of water beside his bed, but manages to knock it to the floor instead. 

Jaime groans and starts to sit up, but Amy has jumped to her feet, levitated the cup off the floor, and refilled it before he can move any further. 

She snatches it out of the air, slopping water down the front of her wrinkled blouse, and holds it out to him. “Drink this, and sleep.” 

His calloused fingers brush hers as he takes it, but she’s already turning around and marching back to her seat. 

Jaime sips and swallows to avoid thinking about that churning sensation in his gut. He’s too old for this shit. On multiple levels. 

And she is far too young and successful to be spending the rest of her life around here, taking care of strays. 

“Goodnight,” he says, quietly, when he’s done. 

He’s already rolled over with a sigh when he hears her reply, “Goodnight.”


	109. After an argument (Cersei/Ned)

#17 - Ned/Cersei

The first time Cersei gets into a shouting match with her husband, she is three moons wed, which seems a reasonable length of time, given the conditions she’s been laboring under. 

Which are, respectively, deprived of any tolerable western ladies and instead saddled with a bevvy of northern nags, deprived of Jaime, most intolerably, and instead outfitted with sober, stoic, sensible Ned Stark, who is about as passionate as a wet rag, and fighting off coughs, sneezes, and chills from these horrific summer snows that seem to blow in every other week. 

But she is also not a fool, and knows that now the image he’d no doubt built up of her, as his aloof but sophisticated southern wife, with her lavish gowns she can no longer wear in this weather, and her golden ringlets, and her creamy soft skin, has been destroyed. 

She’s revealed herself to be just as capable of shouting up a storm as one of the half-savages he might call kinswoman, of a sort, and she also knows that if her mother- not that her parents ever raised their voices to one another, they would never- but if her mother had ever spoken so rudely and temperamentally to her father, he would have been incandescent with fury, and not spoken to her for weeks, for she would have been confined to her rooms.

Cersei cannot think of much worse than being confined to these shabby rooms with naught to do but stare out the frosted window, sew, or read whatever passes for literature in this wretched keep. 

As he makes to stalk out, she summons up some womanly tears and rushes him, clutching at his arm. “I’m sorry, my lord, you must forgive me- it was my moon’s blood, it loosened my tongue, I shall never speak to you in such a common manner again, my love, you must forgive me-,”

She stills at the icy stare he’s giving her, but he is not rough or ungentle when he removes her hands from his arm, and holds them for a moment in his own. 

“We’ll leave each other be until we’ve both calmed down,” he says, reasonably, damnably. 

“My lord,” says Cersei, “I- I am sure I need only a night to gather myself, trust that on the morrow I will- I will be as a wife ought to behave, you need not… you can trust me around your household-,” she is not going to say please, she is not a child, she is a Lannister, and she will never say ‘please’ to her husband, even if he’s been… not so terrible as she thought he might be, dull and grim as he is. 

“I am not keeping you in these rooms against your will,” he looks surprised at that. “Did you think I would?”

“Of course not,” Cersei says, but knows the flush in her cheeks and neck betrays her.

He looks almost chastened, to her irritation, and releases her hands. “You are my wife, not my prisoner. You may always come and go as you please, my lady.”

Cersei presses her lips together, and tries to fight down that treacherous wave of relief- and even gratitude. She is not going to be won over by a few- by a few kind words, and a pat on the head, like an old kicked dog. 

Still. She cannot deny the surprise she feels. Perhaps he is not so rigid as she’d imagined. At least he can be bent, then. That might make things a bit more tolerable around here.


	110. Worry (Mae & Jaime)

#20 - Mae & Jaime

Jaime swears under his breath when he finally catches sight of her, dawdling in front of a shop, entranced by the colorful fabrics on display outside. 

Fighting back the wave of relief, he steels himself and stalks forward, elbowing through the crowded street, to catch Amy Benson’s devious daughter by the arm. She tries to jerk away, exclaiming in anger, then recognizes him. 

“What are you doing here, Mister Isola?” 

Those wide blue eyes are not going to work on him, but he pulls her away from the shopfront and down the street instead, not sure whether to be relieved or disturbed that no one tries to stop them, though he looks nothing like the little girl he is leading away, dragging her feet and complaining. 

“Looking for you,” he says, shortly. “You sent your mummy into enough of a panic that she asked me to keep an eye out.” 

That’s how he knew it was serious; Amy Benson would never have come to him, frantic, otherwise. He doesn’t know what she’s afraid of; Gibraltar isn’t one of the most dangerous places he’s ever lived, and it’s broad daylight on a sunny summer day, but whatever has got her so scared, he couldn’t help but take it seriously, for once.

“She’s not my mummy, I’m not a baby,” Mae complains, twisting unsuccessfully in his grip. 

He’s not holding onto her tight enough to bruise, but he doesn’t want her slipping away again in these crowds.

“Nine year olds are babies,” he says, leading her down a set of stone steps and past some vendors. “Especially when they run off on their mothers. You want to give her grey hair early? I’ll tell her to send you to bed with no dinner tonight, how do you like that, chiquita?”

“You wouldn’t,” Mae says, trying to step on his feet. 

“Would too,” he ruffles her hair with his free hand, ignoring her shout of dismay.


End file.
